The best part about starting your own one-person ghostwriting business?

You don’t need many tools to make thousands of dollars every month.

And you don’t need any startup capital. All you need are several tech tools (which you’re probably already paying for and using anyway). These tools keep your overheads extremely low, and will scale with you (usually at no extra cost) as you land more clients and charge more for your services.

After working with 700+ ghostwriters inside our Premium Ghostwriting Academy, we put together the 12 tools you need to run a successful ghostwriting business.

Let’s dive in!

Tool 1: Typeshare

This is your Digital Writing home—an essential tool if you want to excel as a writer in the digital age.

Typeshare is packed with everything you need to create great work for your clients and yourself:

• Proven templates for all types of platforms and mediums (which you can use to go viral with ease)
• An AI-powered Endless Idea Generator so you never run out of writing topics again
• Pre-built section blocks to help you with content structure and writing rhythms
• AI-assisted headline scorer and rewriter to help you 10x your headline writing
• An entire content scheduler with cross-platform publishing
• A content strategy generation engine so you know exactly what to write for your (and your clients)

And more!

Click here to create your account and get started with Typeshare.

Tool 2: Notion

If you haven’t got a Notion account yet, then we’d highly encourage you to get one ASAP.

You can use Notion to:

• Track your outreach in a CRM (we have a template inside PGA)
• Create Project Plans for your clients & give them access so they can see how you’re progressing with a project (again, we have a template for this inside PGA)
• Use it to hold all your customer content, proposals, outreach notes, and more

And you can do all of this on the Free plan, too.

Tool 3: Carrd

Carrd is an intuitive, single-page website builder that enables you to create high-quality landing pages in minutes.

Use this platform to:

• Create your own business website (so clients can find you and book a call with you)
• Build a landing page for your Educational Email Course (or your other ghostwriting asset)
• And tons more

And at $19 per year, it’s a steal.

Tool 4: Calendly

Calendly streamlines the scheduling process by allowing clients to book meetings directly in your calendar.

This tool can be integrated with your calendar to ensure there are no conflicts, providing a seamless experience for both you and your client. Calendly can also be embedded on your website, making it easy for people who come across you online to book a call with you.

An essential bit of tech for all Premium Ghostwriters.

Tool 5: ChatGPT & Claude

These two are pretty obvious.

If you want to stay ahead as a writer, you need to know how to use ChatGPT (and AI in general).

You can use them for:

• Idea generation
• Template execution
• Editing and writing feedback

And tons more!

(And if you want prompts to help you with all of these, and more, then be sure to take a look at our Write With AI newsletter—this is your Digital Writing AI prompt vault.)

Tool 6: ConvertKit

If you’re writing and building Educational Email Courses (like we teach inside PGA), then you need ConvertKit.

It’s a perfect place to:

• Hold your own email list
• Build Educational Email Course automations
• Send one-off emails and announcement to your list

As you grow as a ghostwriter, you may want to build your own email list so you use it to land more clients (or use it later to diversify your income steams into digital products).

Tool 7: Zoom

Zoom is an essential for meetings with clients from anywhere in the world.

Use this for sales calls, client interviews, touchpoints with your customers, feedback sessions, and more. Zoom's recording feature will capture all your meetings so you aren’t scrambling around during the call making notes. Rewatching these helps you clarify what a client was saying and draw out even more gold from your client interviews.

And you can use Zoom with the following two pieces of software.

Tool 8: Otter.ai

Never take any meeting notes again.

Use Otter.ai to transcribe all your meeting conversations. It turns these into searchable, editable text. And the best part? Use the output to Prep the Page and fill in sections of a piece with the words of your client. This will make you 100x more efficient as a ghostwriter.

And if you’re saving time, then you can land more clients or increase your prices.

Tool 9: Krisp.ai

Use this tool to cancel out any background noise during meetings.

Being a ghostwriter means you can work from anywhere:

• The beach
• A coffee shop
• An airport lounge…

So if you need to take a call during these moments, it’s crucial the person on the other end can hear you. Use Krisp.ai to cancel out any background noise.

Tool 10: Google Docs & Google Drive

Another obvious one.

Perfect for storing customer documents, content files, and more.

Tool 11: Grammarly

Grammarly gives you real-time grammar, spelling, and style suggestions,

While you don’t have to accept everything it suggests, it’s a good way of seeing if you are making any spelling or grammar errors as you type. The style suggestions can be handy in improving your writing and getting real-time feedback on the quality of your work.

Now, on to the final (and most obvious) bit of tech you need.

Tool 12: Social Platforms

You can use any of these social platforms to:

• Pitch potential clients on your services in the DMs
• Publish content about your ghostwriting niche (and attract clients on autopilot)
• Practice In Public, show potential clients what you do through your own content
• Have an online presence where potential clients can look you up to check if you’re legit
• Network with potential clients by following their content and commenting on their posts
• And, if you want to, build an audience around your ghostwriting services

Pick your platform of choice, and go all in.

That’s it!

Again, this is just a list of recommendations—pick and choose what you need as you evolve as a Premium Ghostwriter.

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