Can Ghostwriting be a $200k Side Hustle?
Last week, an article appeared in Business Insider about a Twitter ghostwriter who claimed to make over $200k from their side hustle last year.
The article drew a lot of strong reactions on Twitter:
Some thought it was an amazing business model while others thought that VCs who use a ghostwriting service are frauds.
In this post, I want to answer 2 questions:
Is it realistic to make $200k a year ghostwriting as a side hustle?
Does hiring a ghostwriter make you a fake?
For the first question, the answer is yes, it’s possible.
However, the anonymous ghostwriter in the article claims they spend 5 hours a week on their business.
I highly, highly doubt that’s true. And if it is, their business won’t last long.
It usually takes me 20 or 30 minutes just to switch my brain from one client to the next (I do this by reviewing past tweets, notes, and analytics to help form a game plan for what I’m going to write).
If they truly have 25 to 50 clients (as the article claims), they’re spending just 6 to 12 minutes per client per week. That means clients are basically getting the same content as everyone else - there can’t possibly be time in that 6 to 12 minutes to consider the unique elements of each client’s brand.
Tommy debunks this pretty well:
Churn will be extremely high, since most people will want their ghostwriter to factor in their unique voice & perspective. But hey, maybe that’s the model: Just grab as much cash as possible until this concept burns out.
But what if you want to build a sustainable business?
Here’s how my business looked when I first started my ghostwriting business as a side hustle last year:
3 clients - $8,000 month in revenue (Client A paid $4k, Client B & C each paid $2k)
Client A - 10 hours per week - 2 hours each day
Client B - 5 hours on Monday, 2 hours the rest of the week
Client C - 4 hours on Tuesday
Total: ~21 hours per week, ~84 hours per month
Pay: $95 per hour / $96k per year
I was doing pretty custom work for each of these clients, but churn was very low. None of these clients cancelled during the first year.
As I added more clients, I had to divide my focus between more and more accounts. That lead to a slight decline in quality for all of my existing clients, by default.
Now the ghostwriter in the article claims they made $200k last year, but they imply a much higher income this year. They have “25 to 50 clients” at a time, and claim those clients routinely pay $5,000 to $10,000 a month, or up to $100,000 for a single thread (um, in which universe was this?)
If what the ghostwriter claims is true, he’s making upwards of $10,000 an hour.
So why would he not be doing this full-time (or at least more than 5 hours a week)?
To answer the question: $200k a year is definitely possible, but it’s going to approach 30 hours a week if you want to dedicate enough time to do it properly.
And 5 hours a week to service 25 to 50 clients just isn’t humanely possible; unless you’re totally fine with a 90%+ monthly churn rate.
Does using a ghostwriter make you a fake?
There are 2 scenarios for hiring a ghostwriter:
You hire a writer and let them run wild.
You hire a writer and give them background info on your views, business, and goals; and you constantly give feedback so they can hone in on your voice.
Number 1 does make you a bit of a fake: Hiring someone to write for you without being involved in the process at all is unauthentic.
This is also a horrible content strategy: The content won’t match your actual voice, and that’ll eventually catch up with you.
In my experience, people pursuing strategy #1 are often just “clout chasers”. They want to appear cool on social media and hire someone to do it for them, without regards for how that content actually matches up with their real persona.
This might work for a little bit, but eventually you’ll realize that your content has become so watered down by chasing different trends that your personal brand doesn’t actually stand for anything.
Scenario 2 is what I do. In my opinion, this is a very legitimate form of marketing.
Most of my clients want to create content, but either written content isn’t their strong suit, or they don’t have the time or focus to consistently create content.
In both scenarios, I use my skills for creating compelling tweets and combine it with their unique viewpoints.
I want the content I create to match the real voice of my client.
The ultimate test of a ghostwriter: Does their client’s audience notice that certain tweets are ghostwritten? If not, the writer is doing a good job adopting the voice of their client.