As more authors are increasingly finding it difficult to find the time to create their own works, even where they have the means to, many authors, artists and creative people are hiring other writers to bring their ideas to live, in return for an income.
And you can become a ghostwriter and earn like these other writers, if you can learn the skills and position yourself properly but sometimes it can be difficult to navigate the ghostwriting terrain as a complete beginner.
In this guide, I’ll be sharing with you, the quick steps to start your journey as a brand new freelancer from scratch.
Find your Goal
We could dive right in to the strategies to become a ghostwriter but considering the impact of goal setting on your overall success, I’ll always prioritize choosing your goals as one of the foremost steps to evolve successfully in this writing niche.
Identifying your goal clearly gives you a clear focus. It also allows you to evolve strategies that is custom made towards achieving the set goals. So, before getting started find out why you want to start a ghostwriting career.
As soon as you’re able to find this, get it written down and then head over to the next step.
Learn about Writing & Ghostwriting
It’s harder to transition into ghostwriting if you do not have some decent writing skills. So, if you’re not a writer, you want to first of all start with learning the basics about writing and building your writing muscles from scratch.
Start with writing for your social media audience. Your early days could be focused on areas of writing you’re already familiar with. You can also enrol in writing classes. This may be absolutely necessary for people with no writing experience.
To enhance your writing, read voraciously about different subject matters. You can write for different genres, topics and niches at the initial stages but as you keep learning try to do more writing about topics in your preferred niche.
Learn about ghostwriting. As a ghostwriter you’ll be writing for other people, using their own voice, ideas and representation, find out how this works, learn and build the needed ghostwriting skills that will help you grow your career in your preferred niche.
Identify your Niche
Like writing generally, Ghostwriting is quite broad and it can fall for different genres, niches and even industries. To make the most out of this market, you want to find a genre, niche or industry that aligns with your goals, interests etc.
If your goal is to become a ghostwriter and make money fast for example, focus on building your ghostwriting career around the kind of niches that generates a lot of income.
While finding your preferred, niche, you also have to pay attention to your expertise, experiences and overall career preferences. If you have a clear expertise in a particular field or niche, that can count as a USP in some cases, giving you an upper hand over other competitiors.
Also, if you have preferences for a particular subject area, genre or niche, that can make it easy for you to build your writing in that area but even while considering this, your original career goal must not be ignored. Create a balance as much as possible.
Create a Brand
You need a brand that not only separates you from other writers but one that gives you an edge, presents you as a dependable and professional ghostwriter so you must create one as soon as you’re ready to hit the market with your skills.
The first step with this starts with identifying your brand name. What would you like to be called? Remember this could be a personal brand tied to your name, a business brand or whatever you chose but it must align with your audience needs.
As soon as you have chosen this, use that brand name to create a logo and other brand items then head over to the social media and create a page for your brand. Prioritize social media platforms popular with your target audience, afterwards, head over and build a professional website for your brand.
This gives you a broader visibility and access to audiences within and outside your local area.
Build your Portfolio
Ghostwriting is one writing niche that needs a lot of expertise and professionalism. Clients will want to know that you actually have the capacity to do the work before they can trust you to create their work. And one of the ways to showcase your works is by building a portfolio.
For most new ghostwriters, there’s getting a portfolio can be challenging at the beginning but there are strategies you can use to build your portfolio. For example, start creating works around your niche area on the social media.
Create blog posts, write articles etc. and have them published on third party platforms. You can also write and publish a book around subject matter in your niche area to further showcase your writing style, experience and expertise to potential clients.
Promote your Services
Visibility is a digital currency that can project your work in leaps and bounds and when you become a ghostwriter, you must court visibility by all means.
There are different ways to get visibility but you must make an effort. This can be paid or free like engaging in creating and sharing content on your blog and other relevant blogs where you can find your target audience, optimizing the SEO for your website and web pages to drive increased traffic, posting strategic content to drive engagement on social media.
There are also paid options to even fast track your visibility like paid social media ads, paid search engine advertising and even sponsored post and influencer endorsements among others.
These and a handful of other promotional strategies can further boost your success as a ghostwriter.
Conclusion
As you can see, it’s possible for almost anyone to become a ghost writer, regardless of their location or expertise. And using the steps you just read can give you a head start but always keep in mind that you’ll need to learn, put in the work and stay abreast of industry trends to keep winning in this niche.
And you should also research more on ghostwriting by checking out this resource on further steps to become a ghostwriter below and other resources online.
