Guest Article By Cori Padgett

Finding a ghostwriter can be tough sometimes, especially if you have never hired one before and have no idea what to look for. You’ll probably get a ton of well meaning advice on places to look, and what you should pay for one, what’s too much, what’s not enough, and the list goes on!

A lot of people when first starting to outsource work have a fear of the unknown, and it stops them from taking a leap. But outsourcing can be so critical to your success and peace of mind once your business really starts to take off. Especially if you aren’t much of a writer yourself, or simply don’t like to write, outsourcing to a ghostwriter can be a huge weight off of your shoulders.

So How To Find A Quality Ghostwriter?

When asking this question, folks may send you at first to places like GetAFreelancer.com or Guru.com where you can hire freelancers to do whatever work you are requiring. These can be great places to find services at cheap prices, and is great for finding people to help with administrative tasks. Occasionally you can find good writers there as well, I am definitely not knocking them.

However, when you are looking for a writer you should be looking for someone who has built up a good reputation, and can show you examples of top quality work. You may not always find that on a lot of the freelance sites.

The best way to find a good ghostwriter is through word of mouth or referrals. You can bet that if you find a writer through word of mouth, it is because they have proven themselves and their clients are very happy, and spreading the word.

Check out forums, and see who people may be talking about or recommending. Message boards are good too. Just ask around and see who people point you to. If your shoved in the direction of a certain writer fairly regularly, it’s probably a good bet they are well qualified to write for you.

Found A Potential Ghostwriter – Now What?

So you have found a possible writer, and aren’t sure where to go next. The first thing you will want to do is contact them, obviously. Request a quote based on the project you are looking to have written. Also request samples from them. A good writer will always have samples of past work they can provide to you as proof of their quality.

However, be careful, some writers are unscrupulous and will send you bogus work as their samples, and then when actually asked to write your stuff, it comes back as crap! The best way to avoid this is to not only ask for samples already written, but also ask them to write a short sample article on the topic of your choice. Unless they are already an extremely well known writer whose work speaks for itself, they shouldn’t have a problem doing this for you.

Also check out their website. If they are serious about their work, then they will have a website up regarding their services. Check out the site, see if it has samples available, if it looks professional, and if they have a photo available introducing themselves.

If you decide you like this ghostwriter, and their style meshes well with what you are trying to accomplish, you will then want to draw up a simple ghostwriters agreement with them, just so you both have a record of the terms of agreement. That’s simply good business, so don’t be worried about asking them to do so. If they are unwilling find another writer!

How Much Is Too Much?

Once you have found your writer, and requested their quote, how much is too much? That can only be determined by you. Some folks will say that only expensive writers are quality writers, and all the cheap ones write in broken English. Others take the opposing stance and won’t pay for a writer that charges more than 6 bucks an article.

It all depends on you and what you are comfortable with. In my experience, expensive doesn’t always mean better, but neither do want to shell out money for a cheap writer who doesn’t deliver. Sometimes, when paying a higher price you may be paying not only for quality writing, but also for excellent customer service and timely work. Yes it’s nice to be able to cut costs and save some money, but hiring your ghostwriter may not be the ideal place to cut corners.

Consider the fact that perception plays a huge role in how people judge you or your product. It only makes sense to invest in a quality ghostwriter that is going to represent you or your product in the absolute best light possible.

To Recap…

Do your due diligence. Ask around, get referrals, find a writer with a great reputation. Request samples and quotes, as well as a ghost writer agreement. Don’t mistake expensive for better, but don’t think cheap is always going to cut it! And finally, go with your gut. If you don’t feel comfortable handing that person your money to complete a job for you, then don’t. Keep looking until you find a ghostwriter that is the perfect fit for YOU.

If you liked this article, and are still struggling to find a quality ghostwriter you can trust, feel free to drop by www.writesyntax.com from Cori and request a quote.

A lot of folks ask us how to make money from writing. It’s a great question, simply because writing is one of the core ways to make money online. Just about everything related to internet marketing or making money online includes having to write something of some sort, whether you’re writing or editing a report, writing sales copy, or even simply communicating with your customers.

Note: To download a step-by-step technique that shows you exactly how to make money from writing right away, download the report at the Simple Cash Blogright now. It’s 100% free.

Here’s a quick brainstorm of everything John and I can think of when we’re asked how to make money from writing…

1.) Hire yourself out to write articles. Post examples of your work on a website, then go to eLance, Guru.com, and others to look for jobs. You can also go to the Warrior Forum, and after participating there for about a week, you can post a “special offer” to the Warrior Special Offer forum offering up a discounted rate for writing articles.

2.) Write reports for people. Follow the same techniques in #1, but offer to write reports, instead. Keep in mind as your reputation improves you can begin charging more and more as you attract veteran marketers.

3.) Create a niche website. Use WordTracker’s Free Keyword Tool to find keywords and then write blog entries in Blogger. Write one per day, 300-400 words long, targeting one keyword per article. Use the exact keyword phrases 2 to 3 times in your article, once in the first sentence. Over time you will build a stream of traffic that you can monetize with Google Adsense, related Clickbank products, and more.

4.) You can edit and write new content for private label rights reports and either sell them or give them away via your website. If you give them away, you can easily plug in affiliate links for related products and make some money.

5.) Research and write your own reports. This is our top “how to make money from writing” technique, and one we apply ourselves frequently. First, go to a forum and find pressing questions that are popular and have a lot of replies. Then, find the solution to that problem (there are typically a lot of solutions in the thread of the question.) You can then research the solutions, put in your own solutions, and add your own twist. Write a sales letter, then market it.

6.) Create your own PLR packages. If you enjoy writing articles, creating a PLR article package and limiting the number of copies distributed (20 to 30 is typically acceptable) and selling them for $5 to $10 per package for 10 or more articles can give you some short term cash, especially if you repeat the process over and over.

7.) If going offline is preferred, you can always write your own book and then self-publish it with a site such as Lulu.com, then list your book on sites such as Amazon. You can do interviews with people in your niche to increase your book’s popularity.

Big Secret — Proper grammar is NOT a must to make money online. Neither John nor I claim to have perfect command of the English language, and sometimes we blatantly violate it’s rules. Occasionally we misspell things in our e-mails or in our sales copy, or use improper grammar or a very non-formal tone. In fact, many markets respond better to a non-formal tone. Think about it…

Wouldn’t you rather buy from a person, rather than a big corporation? Most people would.

Keeping that in mind, there are some times when writing formal is necessary. For example, if you’re talking to professionals or writing about science-related topics, then writing formally is a must.

I hope this list of tips has gotten you thinking about the many different ways you can start making money online right now. If you’d like other models for making money online, be sure to check out the Simple Cash Blog. It contains a 100% free report that shows you, step-by-step, how to make money with writing.

Click here to download the report at the Simple Cash Blog right now…

Do you really want one million dollars? Here’s a plan that will work…

Out of necessity, I will make some assumptions. You can very easily put this entire plan into a spreadsheet and work the numbers. That is, you can create a speadsheet that has plenty of simple variables in it and adjust as you want.

Here’s what you need to do first: Generate $1 of profit. It doesn’t matter how you generate that first $1 but you need to do it. Try article marketing, affiliate marketing, or freelancing. Write a report and WSO it. It simply doesn’t matter. Just generate that first $1.

Next, focus like crazy (see: 10x Method) until you reach $100. If you can make $1 you can make $100. Do the same thing that worked again and again. Get to $100 cash in your account.

Third, invest the $100. This $100 is not for fun and games. It’s seed cash for your $1,000,000 empire. You can only spend this money to make more money. If you spend it on that caramel macchiato, then don’t ever plan on doing a JV with me. Don’t ever plan on hitting the $1,000,000 because you’re wasting your opportunity. You are just a consumer not a producer — you need to produce and invest like a wild animal on wild animal crack cocaine. Insane focus to win…

So, what do you invest in? I don’t care as long as it throws off cash every single month. You need to buy assets. For our little $1,000,000 journey let’s stick with something I love dearly: CONTENT. You really can’t own too much content. Used correctly, content is money. It’s always possible to generate cash from lot’s of content. You can sell content. You can re-sell it (think: PLR, MRR). You can use it for pulling in eyeballs; customers with a burning want or need and they have cash.

What kind of content should you buy? For this journey, let’s talk about straight up articles. The kind you’d use for a high quality blog entry or a submission to EzineArticles.

Hint: You can set up review sites in various niches quite easily. You can follow any number of methods and use any style of marketing. There’s no magic here.

Fourth, we’re going to do some math. We’re going to assume that you can buy a smashing good article (high quality and 500+ words) for $10. (This is something you can adjust up or down. I can buy content for $4-5, but that’s a topic for another day.)

So, take your $100 and buy 10 articles. That’s about 1/3 to 1/2 of a pretty decent web site. Note: You can easily set up a blog or a nice static web site using a free blogging tool and free HTML/CSS templates. This is baby food stuff you can figure out. Got it?

Hint: You’re going to set everything up as fast as possible. You might need to burn $10-20 of your first $100 on hosting and a domain. Don’t fight this. Just do it. Or, again, forget about hitting $1,000,000.

Fifth, you’re going to get your site indexed by Google. You’re going to submit your RSS feed. You going to use free services to get higher rankings. You’re going to submit some good comments on niche-related blogs. You’re going to consider generating a little more cash and joining traffic generation memberships and services, e.g., Traffic Drill. Again, this is all Internet Marketing 101.

Sixth, you’re going to repeat all of the early steps again. You’re going to generate another $100-300 and you’re going to buy more content for your site. The key is reinvesting and focusing to grow, grow, grow.

Note: These 6 steps should only take you 3-4 weeks at most. The truth is that you can do it in 3-4 days. Simply do some work for some other internet marketers. Some freelance work will get you all the seed cash you need. You can generate the seed cash offline too if you really want…

====== TAKE A DEEP BREATH

At this point you’ve done what seems like a lot of work and you’re not rich. Well, get used to it. Getting to $1,000,000 takes time. Some folks can do it extremely fast, but they are in the top 1% and mostly lucky. You’re in for a battle. It’s one you can win, but you have to be ready for a serious uphill fight. If you’re *sincere* about wanting $1,000,000 then keep reading. If not, then pack up and go home.

Listen up. There is plenty of opportunity to make $100 to $5,000 per month for part-timers. You can generate $10-100K per year without being too deadly serious. But, if you want that $1,000,000 there’s some punishment ahead. I’m just warning you.

Note: Some internet marketers will disagree with what I just said. Great! I’ll leave it at that. I welcome disagreement and logical discourse.

====== EXHALE AND GET READY

Seventh, now your niche site is fully operational. Time to really focus on the monetization and working the numbers. Sure, you could have already pulled some cash from your site, but if you haven’t this is how it works. (Note: Replace “niche site” with “blog”. It doesn’t matter.)

I’m going to assume that you know something about Google Adsense. (Experienced folks: Don’t groan. I don’t want to hear it. Just replace “Google Adsense” with Clickbank, pay per lead, eBay affiliate program, or whatever money-making special juice you use. I’m going to use Google Adsense because it’s so monkey simple.)

Assuming you put a couple of ads on each of your pages or on your blog entries, you can do something AMAZING.

What’s this amazing thing? Well, you can easily track and monitor your investment and success. (See why Google Adsense makes sense Mr. Advanced Marketing Pro? Sales metrics right at your finger tips.) You can see exactly how well you’re doing or not.

* How much does each page, on average generate?
* How much money am I making per day?
* What days are better than other days?
* How am I doing from month to month?

Eighth, you’re going to figure out what each page is worth re: Adsense. For example, let’s say that one page, on average, is worth $5 per month in Adsense revenue. This is achievable. But, again, you can manipulate this in your spreadsheet.

Your 30 page niche site generates $150 per month. ($5 per page x 30 pages, got it?) Now, I want you to think about that…

In just 2 months you’ll earn back your initial seed investment of $300. Remember that you struggled to hit the $300 mark, but now eyeballs are paying you back in just 2 months.

From the very start of your $1,000,000 quest, in just about 3 months you’ll be 100% EVEN in terms of your investment. Plus, you now have an asset that throws off, on average, $150 every single month.

Doesn’t that feel pretty good? I mean, really, that’s getting pretty close to a car payment. Do 3 months of work and you can get a FREE CAR.

Yes yes yes yes yes, I hear you. That’s not exactly how things work. It’s not “reality” but listen to me, it’s damn close. This is how internet marketing really works folks…

FREE CAR (with just 3 months of work)

You’ve got to love this game.

====== SIDEBAR START

Here’s something you must learn from this posting. Throw out all of my advice. All of it. But remember this…

I bet you would be willing to buy something from me right now. You are officially sold, my Marketing Friend. Go on, you can admit it.

The lesson? Provide the right value the right way to the right people and they will kill to buy from you.

I’m not selling anything here. Put your wallet away. But never forget the lesson I just taught you. This posting had a hidden lesson that I exposed for nothing. I just put it out there for you to devour…

====== SIDEBAR END

Where were we?

Oh yes, back to your $1,000,000. Here’s what’s next.

Ninth, you’re going to keep working and investing as if your very life depends on it. You’ll sacrifice and work like a beaten dog. You’ll smile and wake up every day ready to pound through any obstacle.

The End.

Just kidding. You’re going to take the $150 you generate each month and you’re going to re-invest in more content. And, you’re going to still work to continue to add more to the “pool” of money for buying even more content on top.

Let’s do the math…

Month 4 (remember, we’ve put in about 3 months of work at this point.)
30 pages of content –> $150 in Adsense per month –> buy 15 more pages = 45 total pages

Month 5
45 pages of content –> $225 –> 22 more pages = 67 total pages

Month 6
67 pages of content –> $335 –> 33 more pages = 100 pages (wow)

Month 7
100 pages of content –> $500 –> 50 more pages = 150 pages

Month 8
150 pages of content –> $750 –> 75 more pages = 225 pages

Month 9
225 pages of content –> $1,125 –> 112 more pages = 337 pages

Month 10
337 pages of content –> $1,685 –> 112 more pages = 449 pages

Month 11
449 pages of content –> $2,245 –> 224 more pages = 673 pages

Month 12
673 pages of content –> $3,365 –> 336 more pages = 1,009 pages (wow)

Month 13
1,009 pages of content –> $5,045 –> 505 more pages = 1,514 pages

Month 14
1,514 pages of content –> $7,570 –> 757 more pages = 2,271 pages

Month 15
2,271 pages of content –> $11,355 –> 1,135 more pages = 3,406 pages

Month 16
3,406 pages of content –> $17,030 –> 1,703 more pages = 5,109 pages

Next month you generate $25,545 from those pages. That’s right…

After 1.5 years of intense work you now generate a staggering $25K per month. Just from content, advertising, and reinvesting your profits. The power of compounding is obvious.

========= PAUSE

Now, before any Experienced Marketers bite my head off please understand that I know the limitations here. This is an idealistic model. Issues include:

1. Finding that many writers and coordinating them.
2. Editing, updating, and posting the content.
3. Potential fall off in advertising
4. Technical issues and downtime.
5. Competition or death-by-Google-exclusion or sandboxin’

There are plenty of reasons why this is complete hogwash. But, you can adjust this in any way that you want. The basic principles apply. This is a model that makes sense and folks can follow it.

========= PLAY

To make everyone happy, let’s do this. Let’s assume that you simply cannot grow beyond 5,000 pages. Fair enough, right? You just can’t. It makes this more fun…

Now you’re generating $25,000 per month. It takes work, but you’re doing it. Bravo!

Now it’s time to end the story…

Take $25K and simply divide it by $1,000,000. (I’m ignoring the fact that you’ve made money along the way, for a moment.)

$1,000,000 / $25,000 is 40. What’s the “40″ really mean? That’s 40 months. $25K per month x 40 months is $1,000,000.

To cut to the end, that’s less than 4 years — START TO FINISH — to hit $1,000,000 in profit.

…

Now, you can talk about taxes, cost of living, and anything else. I will simply respond with a “So what?” and tell you to squeeze out more profits or outsource better or do something else clever.

The point is that, roughly speaking, you can hit $1,000,000 in about 4-5 years if you’re deadly serious.

My advice? Print this out and tear it apart. Figure out why I am right and why I’m wrong. Take notes on what YOU can do. Make a plan to hit $1,000,000 starting today — knowing with full confidence that you can do it. The numbers simply don’t lie.

Hint: Keep in mind that there are many “wealth accelerators” such as JVs, spending money on high quality traffic generation services, smart outsourcing, under-exploited niches and keywords, and more.

I’m assuming plug-n-chug “take the hill” actions that aren’t very risky or interesting. It’s your job to improve on my model and get rich a lot faster, ethically and responsibly.

The best way to pay me back for this posting is to write something even better. Improve my model and tell every single marketer how you would do it. Pass this knowledge around to those people that deserve and desire success.

(My friend, this is not a dream.)

I sincerely wish that you hit one million dollars in 3-4 years, or less.

~ John

Good news for members of The Simple Cash Blog! We just added “How To Drive 1,000s of Visitors To Your Website With Article Marketing” to the membership, and folks are already very excited about it.

Why?

Here’s a list of what we talk about…

• 4 Things All Articles Must Have
• How to Create an Outline For All of Your Article
• 5 Easy Ways To Get Your Creative Juices Going
• What to Do Before Submitting To Article Directories
• Red Hot Tips To Get Your Articles Read
• Writing a Resource Box that Makes People Click
• If You Hate Writing Articles…

Now, remember, if you’re a Simple Cash Blog member, this report is 100% free. Furthermore, we explain how you can sell it and generate your cash from our hard work.

By the way, if you’re skeptical, you really can generate a lot of traffic using articles. We easily generate 10-15 clicks per article we write every single day. Of course a few articles do bomb, but most of them do extremely well because we use the techniques inside EzineArticles Domination.

But that report doesn’t cover everything. No way. That one is focused on EzineArticles only. That’s exactly why we needed to give Simple Cash Blog members How To Drive 1,000s of Visitors To Your Website With Article Marketing.

How do you get it? That’s easy. Join the Simple Cash Blog.

You can start building wealth online today if you want. Here are two simple ways to generate cash in one day or less:

1. Sell stuff on eBay
2. Write some articles for someone (freelance)

Obviously these are not secret wealth building tips. However, you must keep in mind that many people ignore easy ways to generate instant cash.

Look, the truth is that eBay works and freelancing works. You really can generate money in very little time by doing what millions of other people are doing. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be doing it.

But, what if you want to start investing your time and energy better? What if you want to actually build a little business? What are some of the first secret wealth building tips?

The answer is also surprisingly simple. Here are some steps to make it very concrete.

1. Investigate a market or a niche (e.g., coffee)

2. Spend time with that community
 - Visit forums on the topic
 - Read blogs on the topic
 - Search Google for the best web sites on the topic

3. Try to understand some of the key issues, wants or desires of this niche
 - Coffee stains teeth

Now that you have a market and a problem to solve, you need to start digging. You’ll do this with keyword research. When you do that research you’ll find out that these are some keyword phrases that people are using on this exact topic:

* tooth stain 
* coffee stain on tooth 
* how to remove stain from tooth 
* how to remove stain on tooth 
* stain remover for tooth 
* beverage that stain tooth 
* how does coffee stain your tooth 
* green tea stain tooth

Notice that there are several “sister” topics like tea stains. There always more niches and sub-niches to explore. You’ll never run out. Never worry about finding another niche.

So, once you have these keywords and phrases identified, you can either start a blog and write articles on these topics and slowly grow your empire, or you can do article marketing. That is, you can write articles and post them to EzineArticles, GoArticles, and several others.

Editor’s Note: If you do choose the path of article marketing, then you must make sure you maximize your time investment. You must create an effective author bio box. When article marketing, that resource box is your path to traffic. Do it right or don’t take this path.

Once you start generating traffic, you will need to monetize that traffic. There are two basic ways to monetize:

1. Affiliate sales (sell stuff that other people offer, e.g., Rhodes Brothers products)
2. Sell your own stuff

Of course, if you’re just starting out, being an affiliate marketer is the easy path. However, if you want to take the path of secret wealth building, you must eventually sell your own products.

By the way, before you ever write a single word, be sure that there are affiliate products available to you. Visit Clickbank, for example, to see if there are products in your niche. If you can’t find stuff to sell, you can’t make money. Simple, right? Some people ignore this advice.  ** sigh **

Editor’s Note: Not a Clickbank member yet? Sign up now. (It’s easy.)

I suggest also that if your niche is good, start writing a powerful report or ebook on your niche topic. Eventually, this will be your main source of online wealth in that niche. There are many more things you can do after that too, but I don’t want to get too advanced or overwhelm you.

Let’s get back on track. Time to recap:

1. Find a niche and do the right research
2. Generate keywords on the topic
3. Ensure you have something to sell to this niche
4. Start writing and submitting articles, or build your blog

You’ve got a niche, you’ve got a product, and you’ve got traffic. This model is the first secret of generating cash online.

Yes, there are many details behind everything I just wrote. However, you can find those details if you dig around IMsimple.com and other great sites.

Editor’s Note: You can also get a slightly different point of view by going through The Really Simple Method, which is a totally 100% free ecourse on building an internet business. It’s something The Rhodes Brothers put together to help people get started, fast and easy. (Hint: We talk about resale rights and private label rights, and a whole lot more.)

I’ll end by saying that there is a lot of good advice floating around on the internet. In fact, there might be too much. Don’t get too caught up in the hype. And, don’t fall into the guru trap. You don’t need 20 different business models that are based on 20 different ideas.

First, there are only a few “real” business models. They are very simple. Second, many gurus are going to sell you the hot new thing, without any reference to the basic business models that really work.

If you are looking for more information – basic business online – then I encourage you to pick up another free report we put together: Creating an Online Business 101. It goes into far more detail.

The great thing about the free report is that it is comprehensive, but it is basic. We give you tried and true formulas. We also elaborate on the principles outlined above. There aren’t tricks in Creating an Online Business 101.

The funny thing is that secret wealth building isn’t so secret. I use that phrase because it doesn’t exist. Everything is out in the open, ready for you to grab. If there really is a “secret” it’s just that you have to find a market and give them what they want. To make that happen you just need to take action today. Stay focused and help those customers.

Keep delivering value in the right niche with the right products and you’ll grow like crazy.