#and like it's fine i don't mind keeping freelance until the end of the year it's almost over anyways

[wastelandbabyblue]

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[sometimesrosy]

hi! can i ask advice on ghostwriting/freelancing? where should i start? what do i need on my portfolio? which platforms do you best recommend for promotion?

if you don't wanna answer, it is totally fine!!! have a good day! ☺️

I'm not sure I'm a good person to ask. I'm not very good at it. lol.

The writing part, sure I can do, but the business part is not really my thing. Any business, frankly. I am a terrible capitalist. Also I found a company to provide jobs, got a steady client and stuck with it.

I did however quit recently and went off on my own with a client or two. I am not looking for more clients because it takes a lot of time and energy and I am trying to write and work on selling my own stuff. Ideally, I'll be earning money under my own name.

But how did I start? Well, I looked on the freelance boards for jobs, and found a few. Then I researched those companies-- ALWAYS double check to make sure those companies are reliable, actually pay, have consistent work, treat freelancers well, aren't scams to begin with.

I worked for Hotghostwriters, and there were plusses and minuses.

Plus, they were reliable with payment, they were established, once I got a regular client I didn't have to worry about it. It might be a good place to start ghostwriting because they don't ask for a lot of experience. They didn't even ask for my education or work history, even though I have a BA in writing and was a teacher, so if you don't have any experience, that's good. I was hired based on my writing samples, and that's it.

.Minus, I felt like I was a machine not a writer, the pay is not good, the deadlines are far too tight, there weren't enough novel writing gigs until I got the regular. In fact they came back for ME, not the company. It's on the super low end of the pay scale which makes it a bit of an assembly line factory feel. Quality is only important to keep a client. More important is output.

I have heard that TheUrbanWriters is a similar company, and they seem to have more fiction work (I think) and are easier to work with but the pay is actually a little bit less. People say it's a good way to break in. It might be. To get your feet wet. But neither HGW or TUW seem to make you enough for a living wage. I could do it because I have an extremely low cost of living. But I couldn't pay rent with it.

The portfolio that was required when I was first hired was different varieties of romance genres. I believe I used parts of my science fiction novels as well as various fanfic. Occasionally after I was hired they would ask for new samples in new genres or just the genre that a client was looking for. Or perhaps a type of heat, clean, sensual, spicy, etc.

In order to get started freelancing or Ghostwriting, you could also go to one of the established freelancing sites, like Fiverr or Upwork, ProBlogger or MediaBistro. There are others. Google for more information. Go to the sites, look at reviews of the sites, look at the kinds of jobs available and the costs, search companies, search clients. Make sure they're paying their freelancers a fair wage, because many will try to lowball.

Mostly there's a lot of research to make sure it all works out well-- because not all of it will be legit. And as a freelancer you have to protect yourself. I once got hired to write a post apocalyptic book-- or to FINISH a book that someone else started. They wanted something that the old ghostwriter wasn't providing. I think they wanted a tough masculine kill em all kind of story but didn't know well enough to ask for what they wanted. I didn't figure it out until later when I also was fired. But they DID pay me in stages. So I was paid to review the last book. I was paid for the ten sample pages and then for the next three chapters.... they just didn't want me to finish the book. TBH the outline was terrible and made no sense, and I didn't mind getting cut, especially since shortly after, HGW found me a client who I wrote for for years. At the height I was getting a novel every six weeks. Like I said. A bit of a machine thing going on. I don't actually WANT to be writing ten books a year, especially when they're not mine.

I hope I've helped you know where to start and how to consider breaking into ghostwriting.

When you get experience, you can actually make a LOT more. Like 30k-60k a book, but when I was starting out, I was making 600-1000 a book. Short books (30-60k words) but still.

And none of this is actually talking about non fiction or blog ghostwriting or technical writing or any of that. I think there's a lot more work for that and the projects are smaller.

Good luck. Remember, research, research, research.