It’s no secret, many top information product publishers and online marketers rely on a degree of ghostwriting service where they hire an outsource writer to develop content for products or marketing.
Many others never take the plunge because they think it is a much more difficult and costly exercise than it really is. I have used ghostwriting services dozens of times – mostly successfully, though success does rely heavily on using the correct ghostwriting contract.
For the members of InfoMarketersZone we have detailed videos outlining the entire process of finding, posting, selecting and using ghostwritten material as a method of creating content for your infoproduct publishing or marketing business. We have pulled some of the most important tips for you here…
Whenever you use ghostwriting services from either a dedicated writing resource or from an outsourcing site like www.elance.com or www.freelancewriting.com you will enter into a ghostwriting contract that will make or break your project.
In most cases, the individual or service you deal with will have their own base ghostwriting contract that outlines basic delivery clauses as well as conflict resolution steps. You want more though since most of these are simply put in place to protect the service and ghostwriters, but do not put the focus on getting you what you want. So, here are some important secrets to realizing a successful ghostwriting project.
GHOSTWRITING CONTRACT SECRETS
1. Give them questions to answer. Above any other technique, this one is the most powerful, will get you a TON of well-priced ghostwriting offers and will get you what you want just about everytime you post a project. Instead of giving your ghostwriting project a general idea of topic or fuzzy description of what you want, instead, give them a detailed outline of exactly what questions you want them to research and answer. Putting this detailed outline into your ghostwriting contract ensures clarity of your expected deliverables. Believe me, when you do that you will get many high-quality ghostwriting bids simply because ghostwriters do not like uncertainty either – greater certainty means they can focus on the work, get it done faster and get paid more reliably.
2. Post for experience and writing skill. When I want an article, a report or a chapter for an ebook ghostwritten, I look first for experience and then for writing ability. By using this approach you can get some amazingly great content from writers who are not as professional or well-known meaning they will charge you less. For example, if you want content written on losing weight using a certain approach (diet, exercise, etc…) then in your ghostwriting contract specify that your bidders should have personal experience (or at least have written on this topic before) so you get higher quality content.
3. Tell them the PURPOSE of your project in the ghostwriting contract. Much of the demand for ghostwriting content today is misguided attempts at keyword rich content at the expense of quality. That is NOT what you want – so you need to specify specifically in your outsource contract that you expect the quality to be high, similar to what you would find in a book on the topic, that your objective is NOT keyword loading, but rather quality content.
4. Reference relevant research. Tell them in your ghostwriting contract that you want them to dig a little and cite relevant, recent research studies or statistics on your topic. The good writers will do this anyway, but must need to be told. By including citations to resarch in your content your project will be perceived much better by your audience and peers.
5. Check samples. Include the requirement that you would like to see at least 3 samples of their work in your ghostwriting contract. Also, you should specify that you would like the samples to be relevant to your posted topic so that you can get a sense for not only their writing skills, but how well they know their topic.
You want to get all 5 of these requirements added to your ghostwriting contracts – do not rely only on verbal or email exchange, but instead get them in as part of the contract.
As many of our InfoMarketerszone members have found, when you use these techniques your ghostwriting contracts and projects suddenly become much simpler and much more effective in getting what you want.
Jeff
