Being a writer can be a grind.
Passion aside, to earn a living, you’ve got to go where the money is — and that often means working with an agency or as a freelancer. And that often means giving up credit on your work.
Now, it’s fair to say that all writing experience is beneficial, and we’re not saying we’re against agency or freelancer arrangements. But as any savvy wordsmith knows, building a collection of impressive and respectable work (that you can prove is yours) is essential to building your profile and attracting bigger and better employers or clients.
So what can you do when contractual agreements and/or client policy prevents anyone from ever knowing you wrote something? That’s a tough pill to swallow.
Call it ego for lack of a better word, but it’s natural to crave recognition for your hard work. You’ve maintained your creative wits, put in the hard research yards, and kept those writing muscles pumped up. You deserve the chance to show off your work.
Especially when it means you’ll win more clients, get a better job, and make more money doing what you love.
Authory’s built-in features enable writers to curate and share ghostwritten content without breaching contract or stepping on clients' toes. These features are designed with you, the established or prospective ghostwriter in mind, so you can always show off your best stuff and get the attention you deserve. Read on!
The Ghostwriting Dilemma: It’s Good for a Writer’s Career, but It also Isn’t
Ghostwriting can be an asset to any writer. It’s a paradox in that, depending on the writer’s goals, can both tremendously boost their career, or leave them in the dark. And there are specific advantages and drawbacks to the practice itself.
There are Advantages to Ghostwriting
You can, or may already, enjoy some benefits as a ghostwriter. For example:
Exposure to many different industries and brands. There's the opportunity to seek out new clients, find projects that you’re interested in, and discover what aspect of writing you’re best at as a ghostwriter.
Networking opportunities. Working with many different clients — and completing assignments successfully — means word-of-mouth recommendations. Constantly expanding your network and not having to put your nose to the grindstone to find new work as a freelancer is a major asset.
The chance to expand your knowledge. Being knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects gives you a leg up over other ghostwriters and the chance to take on a wider variety of projects.
The perks are nice, but ghostwriting can also be counterproductive to building your profile as a professional writer.
But the Drawbacks are Significant
The drawbacks outweigh the advantages for writers trying to get their names out there and advance their careers:
Client confidentiality. Clients usually want ghostwriting performed so they can credit a member of their own team or even a fictional “face of the company.” Non-disclosure agreements, or similar constraints, prevent anyone else from claiming the work as their own, and doing so can put you in hot water.
Lack of ownership over your work. The inability to demonstrate and/or prove that content was produced by you is an uphill battle. Many job applications require you to show work with your name directly on the page, and if it’s not it can cast doubt on your legitimacy. Even though you’re confident and genuine in your own abilities, the company or client you’re trying to work with doesn’t know with certainty.
A lackluster public portfolio. If you can’t add articles to your public portfolio without risking consequences from clients, and you have no way of proving some work is yours, it can make your portfolio — a writer’s pride and joy — appear less robust and professional.
Authory is tailor-made to counteract these ghostwriting stresses to allow you to bring your content back from the dead! Here’s how.
3 Ways Authory Enables You to Show off Ghostwritten Content
Having flexibility in how you promote your ghostwritten work is a game-changer. Authory’s features deliver precisely that flexibility.
There are three primary ways to do this. The first focuses on enabling you to show off the ghostwritten content that you wouldn’t normally be able to share publicly, and the second — a comparatively simple, yet still powerful option — gives you the ability to separate ghostwritten work that you are allowed to share on your public profile. And lastly, maintain your branding and identity on uncredited pieces.
You’re free to use one, all, or a combination of these features as you see fit. Start by signing up for your Authory account and follow along!
1. Curate Custom Shareable Collections
This feature lets you set rules or manually select content pieces to populate an unlimited amount of custom collections. You can then generate a unique share link to share with prospective clients and employers — without the need to publish this content publicly under your name.
What you choose to add to each collection is completely up to you. To display your range, you could simply make a collection that includes all of your ghostwritten content and keep that on hand whenever you need it. Alternatively, you can create theme-specific collections.
For example, if you’re applying to work with an ecommerce brand, put together a collection of your ecommerce-related ghostwriting work to demonstrate your specific expertise. The options are endless.
To start, navigate to the “Collections” tab on your Authory dashboard.
Next, hit the “Create collection” button in the bottom left. Now you’ll be able to name and add a description to your new collection.
Here’s your chance to set rules that will automatically add articles fitting those filters to the collection (this works for future content as well), or simply select which pieces to include manually.
And finally, navigate to “Share” on the left dropdown menu and enable the “Share to web” option to generate a unique link to this custom collection.
Voila! You now have a new custom collection — hidden from public eyes — that can contain all or a curated selection of your ghostwritten content. Rinse and repeat as needed.
2. Create a Ghostwriting Tab on Your Public Portfolio
The name of the game with this feature is transparency. When you confidently include ghostwritten work in your public portfolio, and label it as so; it’s a win-win. It both fosters trust with whoever is looking at your work and makes that work available to the masses through your site.
Start by hitting the “Portfolio” tab at the top of your dashboard.
Next, simply click the “Content” dropdown on the left.
Now, assuming you’ve created a custom collection or two for ghostwriting with the guide above, select “Add collection” to display and choose from a list of your collections.
Each distinct collection will appear as a separate tab on your public portfolio.
So if a company comes across your site, or you share the portfolio as part of a job application, they’ll see that you have the integrity and confidence to share that work for the world to see.
3. Open Branded Content Copies within Authory’s Platform
Last but not least, the ability to display your ghostwritten work as beautifully formatted carbon copies of the originals — within the Authory ecosystem — does wonders for boosting the perception of ownership over your work.
Basically, Authory takes all of your content and creates a facsimile within the platform. By default, any article on your portfolio will link visitors to the original client or employer’s site it was hosted on — but you have the option to redirect traffic to the copy, instead.
The key benefit here is that even if the original page lacks a byline or credit to you, viewing the copy maintains that attachment to your brand and profile while still allowing others to enjoy your content the way it was meant to be viewed. This is something that offline options like PDF copies can’t deliver (but Authory does that as well).
To better understand the distinction, opening an article linked to the original source would look like this:
Whereas with the link settings tweaked, the content will be displayed like this — with your name and branding consistently displayed.
First, open the collection you want to link to copies instead of the original and hit the “Share” dropdown option.
Second, below the shareable link, you can toggle “Always link to copy.” This will cause every piece within this collection to display as a copy when clicked by a visitor.
Alternatively, you can select individual pieces of content and apply the same function. Simply click the article, then the “Share” dropdown, and choose “Link to copy” from the dropdown.
So there you have it. The option to keep the content displayed within your profile gives ghostwritten content the attachment to and awareness of your name and brand.
Keep Your Creative Passion and Momentum Alive with Authory
At Authory, we’re writers, too.
That’s why it’s our goal to maximize the usefulness of your content — ghostwritten or not — to help you enhance your career and enrich your creative output. We love to see your passion endure and to hear about how our platform helps you achieve your goals. We also want to hear what we could do to improve!
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