How to Become A Ghostwriter

If you are good at English, enjoy writing and want to work at home, ghostwriting could be the ideal business idea for you. A ghostwriter is someone who writes for other people – most celebrities who publish their lifestory hire a ghostwriter. The ghostwriter sells the rights to the book along with the credit for having written it.

You’ll need to have a good command of grammar and spelling and to be able to write quickly. Research is another important aspect of the job, as you will often have to write about subjects about which you have no exisiting knowledge.

These days, the opportunities for ghostwriting have increased dramatically with the huge amount of information being published every day on the internet. Website publishers are constantly looking for content and with the search engines clamping down on duplicate content, it is no longer good enough to use the same written material which can be found on other websites. With the growing need for fresh content, ghostwriters are in big demand.

Creative writing jobs are amongst the most difficult to find in the offline world, but getting started online is a great deal easier. If you have been dreaming about jobs in writing since you were at college, or have been to creative writing classes, you probably have ideas of becoming the next JK Rowling or writing the next great American novel. However, you have to remember that most writers start out with much less grand assignments.

Working as a ghostwriter will help you develop your skill and earn a living and you can focus on your own creative writing projects in your spare time.

Article writing is a good place to start. Many website owners publish articles in article directories as a means of getting visitors to their sites. However, to be successful, they need to write and submit hundreds or articles. And most of them don’t have enough time to do this. Aware of the need for content, many websites have sprung up selling PLR or private label rights articles and ebooks. Both of these types of website pulbisher need a contstant supply of new articles and ebooks and they will pay writers to provide it.

The easiest way to get started is to look for jobs on sites such as rentacoder.com. elance.com and guru.com. You can start with some article writing jobs and if clients like your work, they will use you regularly. Over time you will build a reputation and will be able to take on more substantial jobs.

Once you have become a little more established, you can set up your own website. You might even think of setting up a plr site, offering monthly memberships and writing some of the content yourself but outsourcing to other ghostwriters.


If you dream of writing for pay, this is a business you can set up easily and for very little cost. You don’t even need your own website to get started, just a computer, a wordprocessing package and access to the internet and email.