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I started ghostwriting in 2016.

Since then I've ghostwritten for 300+ different industry leaders:

• CEOs
• Silicon Valley Founders
• Grammy-winning musicians

And more.

Every day, I get tons of messages about how to get into ghostwriting, how to scale as a ghostwriter, and what skills you need to master to become a highly-profitable ghostwriter.

And in this Deep Dive, I’m going to address the eight questions I get all the time.

Let’s dive in!

Question 1: Should you target a specific industry or play the field and pick a niche later?

When starting out, it’s important to pick a niche where you have an Information Advantage.

Your Information Advantage is where:

• You already speak the industry lingo
• You know the pain points of your target client
• You know what outcomes these kinds of people want

Here’s why this is so important:

When I first started, I attracted founders and executives from every kind of industry.

And I do not have an Information Advantage in every single industry on planet Earth!

So, over time, my co-founder and I started to notice:

• Which clients we enjoyed the most
• Which clients paid us the most money
• And which clients were the easiest to work with

The clients that met our criteria wanted to position themselves as thought leaders but they also wanted to write about non-domain expertise topics like leadership, productivity, or things that are fairly universal.

The clients that were the most difficult were the ones who wanted to get super in the weeds about their specific industry.

But if you have that domain expertise, you should write for that particular industry because your Information Advantage means you can charge more.

So, look for the pattern of who's the easiest to work with and which clients are the most efficient for you (and if you need help doing this, ask yourself these 3 questions).

Question 2: What's the most challenging part of ghostwriting for such high-profile clients?

The biggest challenge is TIME.

You are dealing with people who in many cases are managing anywhere between 5-10 employees all the way up to thousands of employees. You're dealing with people who are used to being in power dynamics where they're the ones telling other people what to do. Many also have families.

From the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep, they have people pinging and dinging them asking for things.

And to use myself as an example, right now, I have 50 unread text messages, thousands of unread emails, and 500 unread DMs from people asking things of me and employees to look after.

So, what is a busy CEO really looking for?

Someone to manage them.

The worst thing you could do as a service provider is start working with someone like that and then say, "Let me know what you need," because that's already their whole life.

What they value more than anything else, even more than your writing quality, is your ability to:

• Follow up eight times
• Not get frustrated when you don’t hear back
• Move the ball forward and take radical accountability

(And if you want more help delighting your clients, check out these 7 rules to give a white-glove client experience here.)

This is a life hack, too.

The people who get paid really well seem like outliers because so many other people experience the same problem and either couldn't figure it out or gave up.

But those who are successful figure it out on their own.

Question 3: How do you get into the mind of a client to produce meaningful work?

You don’t want to go onto your call with a CEO and ask, “What ideas do you have?” because they aren’t going to know what to say.

Remember, you’re the expert here—so guide them.

Winning ideas are the overlap between:

1. What this person would be most equipped to talk about
   1. This could be broad for your client (e.g. CEOs can talk about morning routines, hiring, firing, etc)
   2. Or very deep, domain-specific knowledge
2. And what topics other people would find most interesting

Show up with ideas that would perform well and speak to their target audience.

Remember: writing and clarity of thought is a skill.

You can't expect the client to just show up and rattle off genius content.

No matter how successful the person is, even if they're the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, the skill of articulating your thinking is different. So, you have to show up with questions and organize their thinking.

And if you do it well, many clients start looking forward to their calls because they view it as "showing up to the gym." It’s the one time in their week when they get to practice articulating what they think about their industry.

One final pro tip: Always dial in one idea at a time. Don't try to cram 10 ideas into one piece. Extract one thing and focus on that for 30 minutes.

Anything unrelated goes into a "later list" folder.

Question 4: Should I start ghostwriting if I'm a new writer and haven't published anything online before?

Can you?

Yes.

Should you?

Sure.

But is your life easier or harder by not writing for yourself on the internet?

Well, it's harder. We have plenty of people in our Premium Ghostwriting Academy who don't write on the internet and don't write under their own name. They don't build a personal brand. They use cold outreach and tap their network to land clients. So it can work if you’re not already writing online.

But it's worth asking how many more clients could you attract and how much easier would it be to convert those clients if you used yourself as practice?

Practice on yourself, write what you want to master under your name, and then rent whatever's working to other people.

Question 5: How do you measure success as a ghostwriter?

This question reveals how little people understand about their value.

Often, freelance writers think their offer needs to promise something specific:

• "I will get you 10,000 followers in 60 days"
• Or "I will make you an extra 30 grand from your sales funnel"

But nobody in marketing has any idea whether something is going to work or not. Marketing is like working on Wall Street—everyone's just trying things. Even if you're the head of marketing at a giant company, you're not really promising specific numbers because you don't have control over that.

I built my ghostwriting agency doing nothing but 800-word articles.

We ended up writing more articles each month than Inc. magazine or Forbes, doing over $2 million a year in revenue. Not once did I promise specific follower counts or revenue increases.

The way we framed the value was simple:

1. Do you understand it's important to write on the internet?
2. When you write on the internet, people view you as a thought leader so it's easier to connect with peers and inbound opportunities are likely to increase
3. Right now you're not writing on the internet
4. When we work together, you will be writing on the internet

The value is that zero-to-one moment. They don't have those things now but they will when you work with them.

That's the value you sell.

Question 6: What types of businesses should I steer away from?

This goes back to where you have an Information Advantage.

When I was ghostwriting, I started to avoid clients where I didn't want to know anything about their industry. Some early clients were in industries I knew nothing about but was excited to learn more about (for example, crypto in 2016 and 2017).

So, the real question comes down to what you want to learn.

I had clients in other industries (like affiliate marketing and grey hat marketing) that I wasn't interested in. But I continued saying yes to clients in industries I didn't know much about but found interesting. And to give you an idea of the industries that need a ghostwriter, read this post here.

Consider steering away from businesses where:

1. It's too time-consuming, even if interesting, because time is your primary asset
2. There are regulations on what you can/can't say (medicine, finance, health and wellness, etc.)

Pro tip: If you learn to navigate these regulations, it increases your value tremendously to those companies.

Question 7: How do I come up with different topics for clients?

All content leads back to 5 content buckets:

1. Mission. What is the founder's/CEO's mission? What are they trying to do and why does it matter?
2. Industry Trends. What's currently happening? Can they comment on new data and/or studies?
3. Futurism. Where is this industry headed? Ask them to project current trends 5-10 years out.
4. Education. What could they explain to others in their role or those aspiring to be in their role?
5. Stories. What unique experiences can they share?

You can go back to these 5 content buckets over and over again and they work for any leader in any industry.

Question 8: Is there a ceiling for solo ghostwriters?

Most people ask this question way earlier than necessary.

Getting to $10k/month as a ghostwriter is incredibly easy with just a handful of skills. The difference between $10k and $20k/month comes down to outreach effort and the ability to sell on the phone.

This pattern continues up to $30k-$50k. Around $40k-$50k, you'll hit a ceiling as an individual. There are some outliers . For example, New York Times bestselling authors who ghostwrite for celebrities can make $1-2M yearly, but they only do 1-2 projects per year.

For the average person, at around $30k/$40k/$50k per month, you have two main options:

1. Stay there and maybe launch digital products
2. Scale into a small agency by hiring other writers, account managers, and sales reps

Many people ask about scaling before they've even reached $10k per month.

This is "Early 20s Syndrome"—constantly looking for the next thing instead of focusing on what's right in front of you.

Focus on reaching the next milestone, and the next step will reveal itself when you're ready.