How to start a LinkedIn ghostwriting business

To start a LinkedIn ghostwriting business, pick one kind of client you understand, learn to capture their voice in a single intake call, and deliver a steady month of posts they approve before anything goes out. The first three clients usually come from people who already know your work, and the contract matters more than the website: it has to say who approves posts, who controls the account, and what happens to the numbers clients share with you.

The rest of this guide goes through each of those in the order you will meet them.

Pick a niche you can write about without research

A ghostwriter who writes for everyone has to learn a new industry for every client. That is slow, and it shows in the drafts. A ghostwriter who writes for founders of accounting software, or for partners at small law firms, or for independent recruiters in tech, already knows the vocabulary, the arguments and the common mistakes. The first draft is closer, the revisions are fewer, and the client trusts you sooner.

A useful test: could you list twenty post ideas for this kind of client right now, without looking anything up? If yes, it is a niche you can serve. If you stall at five, pick something closer to your own work history.

• Choose a kind of person over an industry. 'Founders of B2B software with ten to fifty staff' is a niche. 'Tech' is too wide to be one.
• Choose people who have things to say but no time to write. Busy operators are better clients than people who want to become influencers.
• Choose people who can afford a monthly retainer. A niche full of early freelancers will struggle to pay one.

What to cover in the intake call

The intake call is where you collect the raw material for the first month. Record it with permission, because the client's own sentences are the best source of their voice you will ever get. An hour is usually enough.

1. Ask what they want LinkedIn to do for them: clients, hires, investors, speaking invitations. The answer shapes every post.
2. Ask who they want to reach, by job title and situation. 'Heads of finance at companies that raised a round this year' is something you can write to.
3. Ask for three stories: a mistake they learned from, a result they are proud of, and an argument they keep having with peers.
4. Ask which numbers they are happy to share in public and which are off limits. Write both lists down.
5. Ask for two or three posts by other people they like, and one they dislike. The dislike is often more useful.
6. Agree the cadence and the approval deadline before you hang up.

How to capture a client's voice

Voice is a set of habits: sentence length, how formal they are, whether they use humour, which words they would never say. Listen back to the recording and write those habits down as short rules. 'Short sentences. No exclamation marks. Says customers, never users. Explains with a story from a client, then the lesson.' Four or five rules like that are more useful than a page of adjectives.

If the client has posted before, read their old posts too. LinkedIn does not let a new app read a member's post history, but the client can download their own archive from Settings, Data privacy, Get a copy of your data. The posts are in a file called Shares.csv with the date, the link and the full text. Ask for it in the first week.

Every revision the client asks for is a new rule. Keep the list in one place and update it each time, so you never make the same correction twice.

What to deliver in the first month

The first month sets the expectations for the rest of the relationship, so make it predictable before you make it clever.

• A short voice document: the rules you wrote, the topics you agreed, and the numbers that are off limits.
• Three or four themes the posts will rotate through, so the feed does not repeat itself by week three.
• The agreed number of posts, delivered as drafts at least a week before each goes out.
• A simple calendar showing what goes out when.
• A short note at the end of the month: what was posted, what the client changed, and what you will do differently.

How to get your first three clients

The first clients rarely come from strangers. They come from people who already trust your judgement: former colleagues, former managers, clients from a previous job, founders you have helped informally.

1. Post on your own profile first, on a steady rhythm, about the niche you picked. It is the portfolio a prospect will check.
2. Write a list of twenty people in that niche who already know you. Send each a short, personal note saying what you now do and who it is for.
3. Offer the first client a fixed trial period, for example one month, with a clear end date and a clear price after it.
4. Ask each happy client for one introduction to a peer. Founders know other founders.

What to put in a ghostwriting contract

Most disputes in this business come from three questions nobody answered at the start. Put all three in writing before the first draft.

• Approval rights. Nothing is published without the client's approval. Say how they approve (a board, an email, a message), how long they have, and what happens if they do not answer. The safe default is that an unapproved post does not go out.
• Who owns the account. The LinkedIn profile belongs to the client, always. You should never hold their password. Use a tool where the client connects their own profile, and say in the contract that access ends when the engagement does.
• Confidentiality of client numbers. Clients will tell you revenue, churn, deal sizes and names of customers. The contract should say that you use these only for their posts, only with their approval, and never in your own marketing or case studies without written permission.
• Who owns the writing. Usually the client, once paid. Say so, and say whether you may show anonymised samples to prospects.
• Notice period and payment terms. Monthly, in advance, with a notice period of one month is a common shape.

Have a lawyer in your country read the template once. It is a small cost against the one argument it prevents.

How GoodSocials handles this

On the Agency plan, each client gets their own board, four themes and three brand principles, and each client connects their own LinkedIn profile, so you never hold a password. The agent writes the drafts from the client's website and the themes you set, and nothing moves to Scheduled until someone approves it.

When you revise a card with a comment, the card is rewritten and the matching principle is updated, which is the voice document from this guide kept up to date for you. A client's past posts can be imported from their Shares.csv file and shown on the calendar as background.