Annastasia Kamwithi
Annastasia Kamwithi.
- Ghostwriting involves crafting written content for someone else and giving that person most, if not all, of the byline credit as the author of the piece. It's a great option if you want to be your own boss or become a freelancer.
- Annastasia Kamwithi did just this, leaving her banking job that paid $50,000 a year to now make around $80,000 a year.
- Her advice for breaking into the industry is to practice writing - a lot - leverage job boards for opportunities, and partner with other ghostwriters to take on bigger, higher-paying gigs.
- She also suggested making time to pen your own content to give yourself a boost when you're normally not getting any byline credit.
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Like the name of the profession itself, the business of ghostwriting has an air of mystery about it.
Ghostwriting, in case you didn't know, generally involves crafting written content for someone else and giving that person all (or at least most) of the byline credit as the author of the piece. You might write up anything from speech scripts to blog posts to entire books. A wide variety of individuals and companies hire ghostwriters to pen pieces for them, including CEOs and high-level executives, public speakers, and celebrities.
Even well-known authors - who lack the bandwidth to generate enough content to keep a constant stream of thought leadership flowing online - have been known to tap ghostwriters for assistance.
If you want to become a ghostwriter, though, it can be challenging to find definitive information about how to break into the industry, find clients, and price your work. So Business Insider interviewed Annastasia Kamwithi, who increased her income from ghostwriting in just three years from $10,000 a year to around $80,000 a year, for her best advice.
A layoff leads to an opportunity to ghostwrite
Kamwithi discovered ghostwriting three years ago, after she lost her job as a banker with Co-operative Bank Limited in December of 2015. She had been making $50,000 a year and needed to replace the lost income quickly.
The lucky break came when a friend asked her to help him write an article for a local paper, under the condition that she would not receive any byline credit.
Over time, her friend provided referrals that began to multiply, and her client list started to build. As a CPA with a degree in banking and finance, Kamwithi hadn't previously pursued writing professionally. But she did possess a bent for working with words. She brushed up on this talent by hiring a professional writing trainer for three months, who showed her the ropes to start ghostwriting.
"Word got round, and that is how I launched my ghostwriting career," she said. "Apparently, everyone was looking for someone to write for them while they concentrated on other things."
Today, Kamwithi tackles a wide range of projects, which include ghostwriting ebooks (for writers who then sell them on Amazon) and tech-related articles, as well as acting as the senior editor at Social Fish, a financial website for millennials. At Social Fish, Kamwithi does everything from providing ghostwritten content for the financial pieces to editing pieces from other writers.
"Work is in plenty," confirmed Kamwithi. "I am happy with what I am doing currently and wouldn't change it for anything."
Read and write constantly and have a passion for copyediting
"The first step toward being good at ghostwriting is to have a passion for grammar," she said. "If you are the kind of person who always notices grammatical mistakes and it makes you mad, then you could make a great ghostwriter. You must also be an avid reader, be a hard worker, and always [be] ready and willing to do a great job."
She added that the more you ghostwrite, the better you'll get at it - it's as simple as that.
She also highlighted the importance of being "great at research" to know where to find the information needed by the client, and the ability to flexibly craft content that creates the client's desired voice as you write.
Leverage job boards and carefully craft your writing samples
When Kamwithi initially launched her business, she found a steady pipeline of new clients through a combination of referrals and leads obtained via iWriter, Upwork, Freelancer.com, and other online job sites. She still uses these methods today and has secured 76 writing jobs to date on Upwork alone. Though she advertises expertise for other types of copywriting projects as well, most of her projects have been ghostwriting gigs.
"When you work [with] a company such as Upwork, you must be ready and willing to be as diverse as possible so you can make more money. On these websites, they have many jobs advertised, and what we do is bid for them," she explained. "You have to be extremely creative when writing a proposal or a bid and ensure to give the client as much information as possible in order to convince them to hire you."
While bidding for jobs online often comes down to who offers the lowest rate, many clients prioritize quality level and prior experience, particularly when they're coming in through referrals. As a new ghostwriter, Kamwithi faced two challenges common to the profession: She hadn't yet developed a portfolio of writing samples, and even once she started to complete ghostwriting projects they weren't under her name, so she couldn't prove she wrote them.
One way around this, she explained, is to create an original ghostwriting sample for clients.
"[Prospective clients] will often request you to do a sample job as part of the interview process, and once you submit the sample, they are able to gauge your writing style," she explained.
If you decide to share a writing sample from another ghostwriting client with a prospect, be sure to request permission in advance to protect your client's confidentiality.
Another idea is to share a published sample of your own bylined work.
"I remember when I started out I had written one personal article on entrepreneurship tips," said Kamwithi. "I had used this when I was training and just starting out, but turns out it was a great piece that got me hired by a few good clients who created for me an opportunity to launch my career as a ghostwriter."
Even if you don't have samples to share, Kamwithi advised pitching your writing talents anyway. "There are clients who are more than willing to hire newbies," she said. "They will pay you very little for the work you do for them, but at least they give you a chance."
Increase your fees as you progress and partner with other ghostwriters for bigger projects
Setting fees for ghostwriting projects is notoriously ambiguous, since there is no definitive rate for these services. Costs can vary widely depending on the scope of the work, the experience level of the ghostwriter, and what clients are willing to pay.
Writer's Market, which publishes an annual resource for writers, states that ghostwriting for no credit averages $73 per hour, but can go as high as $125 per hour. The average per-word rate is $1.79 per word, or $206 per page, but experienced ghostwriters may charge as much as $3 per word, or $500 per page.
However, when you use online job sites like Upwork to find clients, Kamwithi shared that the rates are often much lower than this. While her hourly rate published on the site is $25 per hour, she explained that clients often want to pay by the word.
"Most [freelance ghostwriters on online job sites] will accept $10 for around 1,000 words of content, but with my expertise and experience I go as high as $100 for 1,000 words," she explained. She added that while she sometimes cuts first-time clients a discount, she increases their fees over time to reflect the quality of her work.
Because $100 for 1,000 words of content is low by industry standards, Kamwithi often subcontracts with other ghostwriters to be able to claim larger, higher-paying projects and then shares the earnings with her assembled hires.
"The key to ghostwriting is to get as many clients as possible and ensure that you have some other writers helping you so you can make as much as possible," she said.
As an example, Kamwithi explained that she once had a client who required more than 100 product review articles written per week, yet the job was lucrative at around $4,500. "This was too much work for one person, and as such, I would find people to help me write them," she said.
Kamwithi, who's based in Kenya, finds potential partners by posting her available jobs on a Facebook group called "Remarkable Freelance Writers in Africa," which currently has over 25,000 members.
She also works with clients globally to spread her reach. Her client Social Fish is based in China, and she has other clients scattered worldwide.
Be patient when it comes to building a steady income
In Kamwithi's first year as a ghostwriter, she made less than $10,000 - a wage that she couldn't live off of as a single mom - so she temporarily had to move back in with her parents. Despite this less-than-auspicious start to her new vocation, she wasn't discouraged.
"A beginner will obviously make very little, but with time they should expect this figure to go way up if they are persistent, committed, and willing to learn the tricks of the trade," she said.
In Kamwithi's case, making more money has involved putting in significant hours. The ghostwriter averages around 15 hours a day on writing projects.
Just two years after starting her business, Kamwithi ramped up her earnings considerably, and she's on track to make about $80,000 in 2019. Juggling over 10 clients or so a month nets her around $4,500 per month on average. While her monthly pay at Social Fish varies based on which projects she is assigned, this gig can add around another $5,500 per month to her income. On a good month, she can make close to $10,000.
"This is not the best, of course; there are ghostwriters who make even $200,000 a year," she said. Kamwithi's professional goal is to break into this upper echelon. She currently is focused on a three-part strategy to try to achieve this: working hard to get as many clients as possible, finding gigs where she can make more per article, and outsourcing more so that she can take on more high-paying projects.
"Out of the total amount I make a month, I probably keep half of it; the rest I have to pay my writers," she said.
She added that as is true for most types of freelancing and gig work, income can vary considerably from week to week, month to month, and year to year. "With ghostwriting, you do not really have a specific set amount that you can receive all the time, because it depends on the amount of work you have done," she said.
Make time to pen your own content, too
"The biggest challenge is knowing that you have written a great piece, an article that should clearly bear your name, but unfortunately nobody credits you for the work," Kamwithi said. "You find it on a website and there is no way to prove that it is yours."
But Kamwithi recognizes and enjoys many perks of her job as an independent ghostwriter, which mirror the benefits of freelancing in general.
"The beauty of this job, as compared to working in the bank, is that I get to set my own hours," she said. "I have a little boy and I do get to stay home and take care of him, as compared to a full-time job where I would go to work in the morning and come back late in the night … nothing beats being your own boss and working on your own time."
The income potential is what makes Kamwithi love her work the most. "When you think about it, the more you work in ghostwriting, the more money you make," she said.
The ghostwriter also recently found a way to overcome feeling demoralized about author credit by penning her own ebooks. She is preparing to sell her first one - a 10,000-word ebook on how to deal with grief - on Amazon.
She has also taken on some creative writing projects, such as selling articles on dotwriter.com for the first time (her initial stories are about home improvements). Of course, any hours that she spends on her own bylined pieces do cut into the time she has to build her ghostwriting business.
"Time is a problem, you really have to squeeze such things in," Kamwithi said. "But if you want something hard enough, you make time."