An article ghost writer writes articles for upfront cash. If you can write in perfect English, using English or American idiom, then you can join the ever-growing ranks of article ghost writers.
Article Ghost Writing – 101
An individual may start off writing articles for the Internet, but once an author has found a profitable niche and can afford to give up the day job, she will outsource the article writing itself to ghost writers.
The article ghost writer is paid on delivery of a satisfactory article to the ‘author’. The author gets her money back by posting the ghost-written article onto InfoBarrel or a similar Adsense revenue share site. Once the Ad clicks have repaid the ghost writer’s fee the ‘author’ is in profit and will continue to earn from the ghost written article.
Starting Out as an Article Ghost Writer
This is a very competitive opportunity, and it is difficult for a Western writer to make a living from ghost writing. There are writers in the developing world who have very low living costs and who can write a 500 word article for $1.
Writing a 500 word article will take most writers one hour. Ghost writers from America, Australia and UK need to be earning $10 an hour, so you would need to write a 500 word article in 6 minutes. This can be done if it is a ‘stream of consciousness’ article, but if you need to do any research at all, the article will take you 15 minutes to ghost write.
American and British ghost writers have one thing going for them. They can write in English of a much higher standard than most Indian and Chinese writers. Editing a poorly written article can take as long as writing the original article would have done. Authors have come to recognise that it is worth paying a premium to have a British or American article ghost writer. No author is going to pay a ghost writer $10 to produce a 500 word article, though you should be able to earn $8 for a well written 1000 word Internet article.
There are three ways for an American or British article ghost writer to make a living:
- Take an article ghost writing job and outsource the writing
- Act as an editor for article ghost writers from the Phillipines
- Learn to write a 1000 word SEO article as a ghost writer in 45 minutes
Outsourcing the Writing
An ‘author’ is usually willing to pay $5-$10 for a 500 word article. If you have a developing world contact who can write as you direct for $3-$6 for that same article, then you can make a few dollars an article very quickly, with very little work involved. Your writer in the Phillipines must be able to write in perfect English and apply SEO to the article as directed for this to work.
Editing Outsourced Articles
An ‘author’ who uses Indian article ghost writers will need to rewrite their articles. If you can learn to edit an article quickly, then this is one way to go. You may end up rewriting the article completely, but, if you can do that quickly from the Indian ghost writer’s “article” and edit four or five articles in one hour, then the numbers should add up.
The ‘author’ may be prepared to pay $5 for an article. She pays a writer in India $1 and ends up with a poorly written article that is obviously written in India. She is still willing to pay another $4 to get that article into a reasonable condition.
Learn to Write Quicker
Article ghost writers must write quickly. Forget your perfectionist streak and write, write, write. Consider buying a speech to text conversion program like Dragon Naturally Speaking.