I’ve made over $3,000,000 as a Premium Ghostwriter.

But how do ghostwriters actually charge for their work and make money?

There are 3 ways most ghostwriting projects or retainers get structured:

1. Flat-Rate, Per Project
2. Monthly Rate, Per Recurring Service
3. Up-Front Cash, Plus Performance Upside

Let’s dive into each one.

Way 1: Flat-Rate, Per Project

Some ghostwriting services provide the creation of an asset with a clear end point.

For example, the primary asset we train ghostwriters on how to write, build, and sell inside our Premium Ghostwriting Academy is a 5-Day Educational Email Course—which is a high-value opt-in for businesses and/or people with personal brands to capture customer emails. This is an asset that takes about a month to build, but then can run via email forever. And for this project, we recommend ghostwriters charge a flat rate of $5,000.

Whenever you’re ghostwriting fixed assets that don’t have any sort of recurring nature, charging a flat-rate per project is the way to go.

Here are some other ghostwriting projects where a flat-rate makes sense:

• Website Copy: Once the website copy is created or “fixed,” the project is usually considered done. You don’t need to “keep creating” or “keep fixing” the copy every month, month after month.
• Automated Email Sequences: Things like Upsell Sequences, Book-A-Call Sequences, Abandoned Card Sequences, etc. Once one of these sequences has been created, it usually doesn’t need to be continuously tweaked. It’s done, it’s created, and now it’s running on autopilot.
• eBooks or Books: These are projects with clear end-points. Once the book is “done,” you don’t continue to tweak and re-write it over and over again—which is why books are usually billed at a flat-rate.

How To Structure Flat-Rate Pricing.

When you’re ghostwriting an asset with a clear beginning and end to the project, and you decide to charge a flat-rate, there are a couple nuances in how pricing typically works.

• If the project is $5,000 or less, it’s standard for the client to pay 100% up-front. Work begins after you’ve received a paid-in-full invoice.
• If the project is more than $5,000 (especially once you cross $10,000), it’s standard for the client to want to pay in installments—usually 50% at project kick-off, and 50% upon project completion. If you are charging for a project in this price range, I would encourage you to proactively offer this to the client as a show of good faith.

The project should have a clear end, measured either by milestone completion or time. Despite charging a flat-rate, it’s very common for these types of projects to “run on indefinitely.”

So it’s very, very important that you establish when the project is actually deemed completed.

And remember, if you ever feel uncomfortable bumping up the price, it’s probably because you have some faulty belief

Way 2: Monthly Rate, Per Recurring Service

Other ghostwriting services create recurring assets with clear deliverables but no clear “end point” in the engagement.”

(Some recurring clients churn after a month, and others stay with you for years!)

For example, after a ghostwriter in our Premium Ghostwriting Academy lands their first Educational Email Course client, we then show them how to upsell the client with two options:

• More Flat-Rate Projects: After a client has a high-value opt-in like an Educational Email Course, now they probably need a few automated email sequences. If they are a services business, they probably need a Book-A-Call Sequence. If they’re a digital project business, they probably need an Upsell Sequence. Etc. So the ghostwriter can extract more revenue from the client by upselling them on additional flat-rate projects (helping them solve the “next problem” in their business).
• Recurring Services: The other option, after a client has a high-value opt-in like an Educational Email Course, is to upsell them on recurring services. If the client needs to increase the amount of traffic going to their Educational Email Course, they probably need a Social Media Ghostwriter. And if the client needs to increase the number of free email subscribers who eventually convert into paying customers, they probably need a Weekly Newsletter Ghostwriter. Both of these services are recurring in the sense that, once you start creating social content or writing weekly newsletters, you don’t really ever want to “stop.”

Remember: Nothing “Recurs” Forever.

Now, a common misconception is that “recurring revenue is better than project-based revenue.”

And in theory, that’s correct. Money coming in every month is better than having to chase down new money every month.

The problem is, even recurring revenue doesn’t “recur” forever.

Just because you sold a client on a recurring service—like Social Media Ghostwriting or Newsletter Ghostwriting—doesn’t mean they are now contractually obligated to pay you your monthly retainer, every month, for the rest of your life. What’s really happening is the client is re-selling themselves on that “recurring service” at the beginning of every month. If they are happy with the work, they stay on. And if they’re not, they leave. (And if you’re thinking, “But what if they sign a contract…?!” that doesn’t matter. They’re going to cancel, and you’re not going to sue them, and you’re both just going to move on with your lives.)

Both project-based services and recurring services have the potential to generate plenty of revenue for you as a ghostwriter.

So don’t rule out project-based services just because they aren’t recurring.

The Two Tiers Of Monthly Rate Pricing.

The vast majority of recurring ghostwriting services fall in the $3,000 to $7,000 per month range.

• If you’re charging less than $3,000 per month for a recurring service, you are most likely undercharging. Not because you don’t have the skills, or the credibility. But because you have some faulty belief swirling around inside of you insisting you “can’t.”
• And if you’re charging more than $7,000 per month, it’s because you have some sort of other strong variable working to your advantage. You might have a huge personal brand with a ton of public credibility, or an insanely valuable network you’ve found a way to monetize, etc.

Best practice for these recurring services is to bill the client in-full at the beginning of the month (or whenever the engagement officially starts), and then every 30 days thereafter.

Way 3: Up-Front Cash, Plus Performance Upside

Now, there is a third way to charge as a ghostwriter, and that’s some blend of up-front cash and long-term upside.

For the vast majority of beginner and even intermediate ghostwriters, not only are these kinds of opportunities rare, but I would discourage you from taking them. These are high-risk, high-reward projects. So until you’re in a strong position of financial independence, I would just take up-front cash and forgo any long-term upside. (For context, I have done dozens of these types of deals over the course of my career and I’ve only had one actually be ROI positive. The rest all lost me money and were a massive waste of time.)

But, just to future-pace a bit for you, here’s how these projects typically go.

Think of Up-Front Cash and Long-Term Upside as two different levers:

• Cash Up, Upside Down: If the amount of Up-Front Cash you receive for the project goes up (which means your “risk” in participating in the project goes down—since more of your compensation is guaranteed), then it makes sense for your Long-Term Upside to go down. The client is the one taking on more risk, which means they are entitled to more of the long-term rewards.
• Cash Down, Upside Up: If the amount of Up-Front Cash you receive for a project goes down (which means your “risk” in participating in the project goes up—since less of your compensation is guaranteed), then it makes sense for your Long-Term Upside to go up. You’re now sharing a larger chunk of the risk with the client, which means you are entitled to more of the long-term rewards.

Ghostwriting books as a service is a good example of this.

When you enter the upper-echelon of ghostwriting books, and you are a successful writer and have leverage of your own (like Neil Strauss, Mark Manson, etc.), you now have some negotiating power. Which means you could charge for the project in all sorts of different ways.

Up-Front And Performance Pricing Structures.

In this hypothetical example, and using round numbers, let’s say you typically charge $500,000 to ghostwrite a book for a celebrity.

• Option A: You could take all $500,000 up-front but forgo any back-end, long-term royalty. This would be zero risk for you but also zero long-term upside.
• Option B: You could take $350,000 up-front but ask for a 1% perpetual royalty on the back-end. This would mean putting $150,000 of your guaranteed compensation “at risk” for a chance at earning more than that in the future, based on the performance of the book.
• Option C: You could take $100,000 up-front but ask for a 10% perpetual royalty on the back-end. This would mean putting $400,000 of your guaranteed compensation “at risk” for a chance at earning much more than that in the future, based on the performance of the book.
• Option D: You could take $0 up-front but ask for a 50% perpetual royalty on the back-end. This would mean taking on the most risk, forgoing any guaranteed compensation but sharing equally in the long-term upside of the book.

There’s no right answer. It’s completely up to you how much risk you want to take on, and how much upside you think there is in the project.

You can also use these pricing mechanisms to structure much smaller ghostwriting deals, if you’d like. For example, you could reduce the amount of cash you take up-front for ghostwriting social media content, but create an incentive where you get paid $1,000 for each post you write that receives over a million views. Or, you could take no cash to ghostwrite someone’s paid newsletter, but share in the profits 50/50. Everything in life is negotiable.

But I will tell you this: in all my years doing performance-based deals, I’ve learned that the deals you want, people won’t give you; and the deals you don’t want, people will offer you all day long.

Which is why I tell ghostwriters, just take the up-front cash.

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