Part of our "Start a Successful Freelance Writing Career" Video series
( Read the transcript )
It might make you a little sick to your stomach. Although you understand that someone else will take credit for your work, there is something just a little sickening about seeing someone else's name attached to your writing. This does not necessarily bother everyone, and there are some writers who make a very good living as ghostwriters without feeling the least bit icky about the arrangement.
You should prepare yourself, however, for the probable instance of running across some of your writing online with someone else's name in the byline. One other ethical concern with ghostwriting is when the writing is for academic purposes. There is a huge market for academic writers to compose research papers, essays, and even dissertations.
The pay for these types of projects is fairly good, and any good writer who graduated from college has a pretty good chance of finding this type of work. The fact of the matter is, however, that if you take on this type of project you are effectively assisting a high school or college student in cheating. Even though many of these academic writing companies claim to only serve as examples, most of the time the students who commission these types of services do so with the express intention of passing the work off as their own.
Many writers do not like the idea of assisting someone in cheating their way through school, no matter what the pay. You need to make the decision yourself and decide if you have it in you to take on ghostwriting jobs. If the idea of it makes you feel a little iffy, then just pass on these types of projects.
Tip: I once write wrote an article for a buyer that was a test article for some future work. The article was on the subject of equity loans, and I labored over that article like no other because I really wanted the job. I did get the job, and forgot about the test article for some time. Eventually, I decided to look it up online by conducting a quick Google search and I actually found it on three different websites, with three different names attached to it. None of them were mine of course, and I think I stared at the computer screen for a good five minutes before I realized that I was flabbergasted and disgusted by seeing someone else's name on my work. The moral of the story is to either not do ghostwriting, or to not look for it after you do it.
You should prepare yourself, however, for the probable instance of running across some of your writing online with someone else's name in the byline. One other ethical concern with ghostwriting is when the writing is for academic purposes. There is a huge market for academic writers to compose research papers, essays, and even dissertations.
The pay for these types of projects is fairly good, and any good writer who graduated from college has a pretty good chance of finding this type of work. The fact of the matter is, however, that if you take on this type of project you are effectively assisting a high school or college student in cheating. Even though many of these academic writing companies claim to only serve as examples, most of the time the students who commission these types of services do so with the express intention of passing the work off as their own.
Many writers do not like the idea of assisting someone in cheating their way through school, no matter what the pay. You need to make the decision yourself and decide if you have it in you to take on ghostwriting jobs. If the idea of it makes you feel a little iffy, then just pass on these types of projects.
Tip: I once write wrote an article for a buyer that was a test article for some future work. The article was on the subject of equity loans, and I labored over that article like no other because I really wanted the job. I did get the job, and forgot about the test article for some time. Eventually, I decided to look it up online by conducting a quick Google search and I actually found it on three different websites, with three different names attached to it. None of them were mine of course, and I think I stared at the computer screen for a good five minutes before I realized that I was flabbergasted and disgusted by seeing someone else's name on my work. The moral of the story is to either not do ghostwriting, or to not look for it after you do it.
