Recently, I was asked to write a personal essay for the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County and their My Mental Health Day campaign.
The good news was I had plenty of material: in the last year, my husband and I moved cross-country, he quit his job then found a new one, and we moved twice within our new city, Los Angeles. Personal essays, however, make me squeamish.
Below is a clip, but you can see the entry in its entirety on the Montgomery County Mental Health Association’s blog.
Searching for a gift for my niece, Athena, I went on Amazon and clicked around aimlessly while mentally reviewing what she likes.
Reading, science, art, WordGirl, princesses, Tangled. Not necessarily in that order. At a loss, I asked myself what I loved at her age (six).
Literally.
I loved those sweet fairy tales with a moral written by Stephen Cosgrove and illustrated by Robin James more than birthday cake.
My first day of kindergarten, all I cared about was when I was going to learn to read. The classroom hamster and snack could wait. I wanted my ring with words so I could memorize and get to reading.
After I burned through Dick and Jane, my mom bought me my first Serendipity book, Leo the Lop. A floppy-eared bunny who learns that being different (even huge, soft ears) makes you special, I could not get enough of Leo. Or any Serendipity book. The pictures were out of my dreams….Pegasus, unicorns, sweet-eyed dragons, shaggy ponies and misfit make-believe characters.
When I ran out of Serendipty books and my mom explained we’d have to wait until the author wrote more, I made up my own stories to entertain myself while I waited.
As I clicked though my memories on Amazon, I realized it was books like these that unlocked my imagination, inspiring me to create my own daydreams.
So, of course I bought every Serendipity book available for Athena.
What was the first book that you fell in love with?
So, how does pricing for ghostblogging or ghostposting work?
It varies. Not the straight answer you were hoping for, I’m sure! But, if you’ve come across this post, I can guess you’re weighing the pros and cons of hiring a ghostblogger for your business’s blog.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of!
It doesn’t mean you can’t write well.
Or that you’re lazy.
Right?
It’s because you’re too busy running a business, doing your job, and don’t have a person on staff that can be effective in their own position and keep up with your business’s blog.
Though you want to keep in touch with your customers, build your brand, spread the news, and use content to help with rankings and SEO, there’s zero chance you plan to hire someone full time for that. Unemployment, health benefits, paid time off, and such? That’s what a freelancer is for!
Blogging isn’t just creating regular, fresh content. It also involves using targeted key words, uploading and tagging images, crafting titles and anchor links, responding to comments, and myriad other small blog management tasks.
A good portion of what I call ghostblogging can take anywhere from 1-4 hours (or more) per post. So, charging by the hour seems the fairest way to manage things.
Before diving into any project, though, we chat. On the phone. Or by Skype. Talking not only helps me to get to know you and better identify your blog’s voice, it goes a long way towards discovering what meeting your needs will require. Most of the time, we arrive at a basic number of hours per month. Using that as a guide, I am able to quote an average monthly fee that’s kinda like buying at Costco. The more hours you contract per month, the better deal you get.
Or you can simply pay hourly by task and not commit to anything more than that.
To learn what it costs to work with me for ghostblogging, editing content, or blog management, don’t be shy – send me an email!!
I count myself lucky to be able to write for a living. At UMass, I studied Communication, focusing on Journalism. After graduation, I wound my way through various marketing jobs writing newsletter and marketing copy. A dreamer, I was inspired to stop working for everyone else and opened a bridal salon. Writing was still a part of my life, though, as I got my kicks crafting text for our website, blog, and marketing pieces. On the side, I created fiction short stories as I had since I ate tater tots for lunch on the regular.
Life took a hard right, and I was left shooting though space. I blogged my way through losing my business, and before long I was blogging and writing copy for one business, then another. If that isn’t a “when one door closes…” story, I don’t know what is.
This November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month. It was exhausting, scary, and amazing writing a 50,000-word fiction novel in a month…it is no joke! But it did just what I’d hoped it would do – jump start me into achieving a long held dream: writing a novel.
Now to edit and polish my own work!