Tell me, does this sound familiar?

• You’re tired of working with low-quality clients
• You want to stop working 10-hour days for relatively low pay
• You’re feeling so tired that you need a vacation (but can’t afford to take one)

If so, then I’ve got some good news for you.

Like many aspiring solopreneurs, you’re excited to take the leap and build something of your own.

And, seeing as you’re subscribed to this newsletter, I’m willing to bet you’re interested in becoming a Premium Ghostwriter. But you look around online and what do you see? Thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of freelance writers all competing for the same poorly paid jobs on Upwork and Fiverr. They have no time off, they’re overworked, and they look like they’re just scraping by on low-paying freelance gigs.

If you’re a writer and you’re:

• Tired of working with low-quality clients
• Pouring your life away working all the hours in the day just to make ends meet
• Feeling so burned out that you need a vacation (but you can’t afford to take one)

Then I’ve got some news for you.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

You can make a lucrative living as a writer AND work with high-quality clients AND still have free time to pursue your passions (or take a vacation!) if you make one simple change in your writing business:

Stop calling yourself a “Freelance Writer.”

The words we use to describe ourselves matter.

Here are 3 reasons why calling yourself a freelance writer is a horrible idea and keeps aspiring ghostwriters underpaid and overworked:

Reason 1: Freelance writers are seen as a commodity (rather than a specialist)

When I first started out, I was so desperate to land my first few clients that I wrote "anything" for "anyone."

But here's the thing: that's exactly how you end up on Upwork or Fiverr, competing with thousands of other writers, all looking to cut their prices to land their next deal. It's a race to the bottom, and trust me, you don't want to win that race. Calling yourself a “freelance writer” is how you position yourself as a commodity writer, rather than a specialist.

And this has 3 major drawbacks:

• You become an “order taker” with the client being the one controlling the project
• You simply “write words” without anchoring your service to a particular outcome
• The client has to decide how they will use you (rather than you educating them on WHY they need your service)

Which ultimately means you have zero pricing power and you just become another “freelance writer” frantically working on 10 different projects from a coffee shop, just to make ends meet.

But as a Premium Ghostwriter, you're not just churning out words. You're delivering a consultant-like service.

• You're solving 1 specific problem
• For 1 specific type of client
• In 1 specific way
• To drive 1 specific outcome

This specialization is what allows you to command premium rates and work with high-level clients.

My ghostwriting agency was a prime example of how this works in practice—we were selling 800-word blog posts for upwards of $1,000 a pop.

How did we get away with that? Especially considering there were hundreds of thousands of freelance writers on Upwork who were perfectly capable of creating the same “thing?” We didn’t call them blog posts and we didn’t sell “things.” We called them Thought Leadership Articles and we sold “Position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.” (We were the first agency to do this—way before “thought leadership” went mainstream.)

Remember: what you call yourself, and the words you use to describe your service matter.

(And if you’re looking for a deep diver into how to use this 1:1:1 framework to differentiate yourself as a ghostwriter, check out this video on my YouTube channel where I walk you through each component and how to use it to start making more $$$ online.)

Reason 2: Freelance writers work with brands, not individuals

Every single business in the world needs a writer.

But the way I delineate between “freelance writers” and “Premium Ghostwriters” is that the former get paid to write for brands, whereas the latter get paid to write for people. And I first noticed this small but powerful nuance at the advertising agency I worked at in downtown Chicago.

As an entry-level copywriter, I would spend hours each day writing for all sorts of brands, ranging from iconic Chicago restaurants to liposuction clinics.

I would write:

• Blog posts
• Newsletters
• Social media captions

I cared a lot about my career, and poured my heart and soul into these posts, only for them to get a couple hundred views online.

Then, after work, in an effort to keep up my personal writing habit, I’d write a quick answer on Quora. Something short, nothing fancy. And within just a few months of writing consistently online, I noticed my Quora answers starting to go massively viral. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of views on a single post. And the only difference I could tell (since I was writing both—for clients, and for myself) was that during the day, I was publishing under a brand.

But at night, I was publishing under my own name.

This is what made me start to realize that people don’t want to hear from brands. Especially on the Internet. People want to hear from other people.

• When a company is taken over, they don’t want to read a press release from the business—they want to hear directly from the CEO.
• When the stock market tanks, they don’t want to know what a bank thinks—they want to know what a veteran trader like Michael Burry (who called the Great Financial Crisis of 2008) thinks.

As readers, we’re looking for this human-to-human connection.

So if you position yourself as a Premium Ghostwriter, you instantly become more valuable to the client because you’re writing for THEM not their business (and this is one the reasons why AI won't replace ghostwriters).

Reason 3: Freelance writers are “available for hire.”

This might be the biggest mindset shift of all.

In subtle ways, you want to communicate to prospects that you are not “some random person who writes.” You want them to see you as a one-person business owner. The feeling you want to instill is that who they are buying from is a trustworthy BUSINESS, a ghostwriting “agency,” who just-so-happens to have only 1 employee. This distinction makes a world of difference in terms of perception, and can oftentimes be the single reason why one person can charge 2x, 5x, even 10x more than “someone who writes” for the same work.

So, no more thinking of yourself as the writer “available for hire.”

You have to really internalize that you are the founder of a ghostwriting business who has 1 all-star employee: you.

This helps you:

• Remove your emotional attachment to your business so you make more rational decisions (rather than thinking the success of your business solely relies on your “genius”.)
• Reduce offer-tailoring for every client so you can gain efficiencies in your time and start to scale yourself as a ghostwriter.
• Isolate problems and surgically improve inefficiencies so your success is no longer determined by how hard you work, but how you approach the next bottleneck in your business.

Everything changes when you start thinking of yourself as a business owner rather than a freelancer. You start making strategic decisions about your pricing, your client selection, and your service offerings.

So, this all boils down to one change you need to make now (if you aren’t already):

Call yourself a Premium Ghostwriter.

Now you have the right label, how do you live up to it?

By using the 5 Pillars of a Premium Ghostwriter:

• Premium Positioning: Get crystal clear on your niche and the specific outcomes you create for your clients
• Premium Offer: Create a high-value service package that solves urgent problems for your ideal clients.
• Premium Outreach: Use a targeted, education-first approach to connect with the right people.
• Premium Sales: Focus on educating clients rather than "selling" to them.
• Premium Delivery: Consistently deliver high-quality work that achieves real results for your clients.

This simple (but powerful) reframe is the secret to escaping the freelancer hamster wheel and never feeling overworked and underpaid again—no matter where you’re at in your ghostwriting journey.

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