Brain Freeze? Hire A Ghost Writer
Does this sound familiar? You have a newsletter that needs to go
out in a few days, but you just can't come up with a good
article to write. You have a serious case of writer's block. Or,
you know you should be adding more content to your site on a
regular basis to keep the search engines (and of course your
visitors) happy, but you just can't find the time to sit down
and write articles every week. There's an easy solution to both
problems. Hire a ghostwriter to write the articles for you.
Basically, a ghostwriter is someone that writes articles for you
that you get to claim as your own and publish under your own
name. No one other than yourself and the ghostwriter has to know
that you didn't write the article yourself. Once you pay for the
article, you hold all rights to it and can publish it wherever
and however you see fit.
Now let's talk about the hard part. How do you find a good
ghostwriter? You can start by posting a small project on elance
or guru.com. Anyone interested in writing for you can bid on the
project and you will get to choose your writer from the bidders.
I mentioned posting a small project because you just don't know
exactly what you are going to get until you receive the finished
articles. A small project in elance or guru terms would be about
15 to 20 short articles on a subject that's either common
knowledge, or easily researched. You want to make it worth the
bidders (to attract good writers) without having to spend too
much per article.
Other great ways to find a ghostwriter is to network with others
in your field, ask friends and post on message boards related to
the topic you want the articles written about. Just ask if there
is someone interested in writing for you. There are also quite a
few freelance writers that offer ghostwriting as well. Search
for ghost writing in your favorite search engine to find sites
like momva.com .
Pricing for ghostwritten articles can range anywhere from $2.00
to $65 per article. Most writers will charge about $5.00 to
$12.00. Keep in mind that you will pay less for shorter articles
than long ones. The average article size is from 300 - 1200
words. Shop around, but don't shop by price along. Like anywhere
else you will get what you pay for. Articles in the $2 to $6
range tend to be pretty simple and to be honest quite boring. To
get any decent hourly rate, the writer has to crank out 4 - 5
articles per hour and it will show in the quality of the
article. You can however find some great articles in the $8 to
$12 price range.
When choosing a writer, start by asking for sample articles.
Find a few writers who's style you like and ask them to write a
few articles each. You should be able to tell who will work out
and who doesn't. If you have done a good bit of writing
yourself, you may want to provide the writers with some of your
own articles before they start, so they can get a feel for your
style and personality. Pick one or two writers to write for you
on a regular basis. It may also be worth staying in touch with
the runner-ups in case a writer doesn't work out, or doesn't
have time for additional projects down the road.
So, will it be worth paying someone to write your articles? It
sure does for me. Submitting article and adding them to your own
site is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to get traffic to
your site. When you add the articles written by your ghostwriter
to your site, optimize them by a particular keyword, or key
phrase to get more search engine traffic. Then submit the
un-optimized version to the various article directories. As your
article is used on other sites and in newsletter the traffic
will start coming in.
How much are you paying right now to advertise on various
websites and in newsletters? $25 per ad or more? For $25 you can
easily get 2 to 5 quality articles from a ghostwriter. These
articles can then appear in countless publications and websites
over and over again. Don't forget, your resource box, with a
link to your site will be included each time the article is
published. Your articles may appear in larger newsletters or
even print papers and magazines that you could never afford to
place an ad in. If you ask me, hiring a ghostwriter and getting
more articles with my resource box out there is a great
investment.