The easiest ghostwriting clients to find are founders, executives and consultants who have a reason to be visible and almost never post. You find them by looking at their profiles, not by waiting on a job board. Then you email each one with two draft hooks in their own voice. This page gives you three emails to send, a monthly package to sell, and the wording for approvals, so the work goes out under their name without surprises.

One thing separates this from selling copy. A copywriter's work goes out under the company brand. A ghostwriter's goes out under a person's name, which means the client is trusting you with their reputation. Your pitch has to prove you can sound like them before they pay you anything. That is why the first email carries work, not a description of your services. If you also write for brands, how to get clients as a copywriter covers that side.

Who to pitch, and how to spot them in ten minutes

Open a LinkedIn profile and check four things. Does the person have at least 1,000 followers or a title that implies authority (founder, managing partner, chief of anything)? Is their last post more than 45 days old, or are their posts one-line announcements? Is there a trigger in the last 90 days: a product launch, a funding round, a new senior hire, a book deal, a speaking slot? Do they sell to people who read LinkedIn? Three yeses make a good prospect.

The trigger matters most. A founder who just launched a product needs people to know about it this month, and has no time to write. A consultant whose calendar went soft needs visibility and knows it. Book projects work the same way but move slower and are priced differently, so start with posts and newsletters, where a decision takes days, not months.

Build a list of 40 people before you send anything. Rocketship can do the finding: describe the buyer (founders of software companies with 10 to 50 staff, in the US), see the first 25 by name, and it emails them from your own Gmail. By hand, a spreadsheet with name, company, last post date, trigger and email address is enough. Our guide to personalization at low volume explains how much research per email is worth it.

Email 1: two draft hooks in their voice

Before you write this, read ten of their posts, a podcast transcript, or their company blog. Note how they open sentences, whether they swear, whether they use numbers. Then write two hooks, the first two lines of a post, as if they had written them. Hooks are what get read, so they prove the point fastest.

Subject: Two post openers for the Hartline launch

Hi Marcus,

I saw Hartline's dispatch tool went live in September, and that your last LinkedIn post was in March. I write LinkedIn posts for founders, under their own names. Here are two openers I drafted for you from your launch page and the podcast you did with the logistics newsletter:

1. "We spent four months building a dispatch tool nobody asked for. Then a carrier in Memphis cut his phone time by half."

2. "Most freight software is built by people who've never booked a load at 6 a.m."

If either sounds like you, I'll write the full post and send it by Thursday, no charge. If neither does, tell me what's off and I'll try again.

Priya Nair
priya@nairwrites.example
412 Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78701. Reply "stop" and I won't write again.

Why it works: it shows you did the reading, it costs him ten seconds to say yes, and "no charge" caps his risk. Variation for a consultant: swap the launch for a trigger like a new service line or a talk they gave. The address line and the opt-out are required for commercial email under CAN-SPAM, so don't drop them.

Email 2: the follow-up with a finished post

Send this four days later if there's no reply. The point is to send the work itself, not to ask whether they saw your first message.

Subject: Re: Two post openers for the Hartline launch

Marcus, I went ahead and finished the first one so you can judge the whole thing instead of two lines. It's 190 words and ends with a question for carriers, which tends to get comments from the people you want. Paste it as is, or mark it up and I'll turn it around in a day.

[full post here]

If this is the kind of thing you'd like twice a week without writing it yourself, I can explain how that works in one email. If not, no hard feelings.

Put the post in the body, not an attachment. People rarely open attachments from strangers. Keep the free sample to one post per prospect. If you give away three, you are working for free for someone who may never reply.

Email 3: replying to "what do you charge?"

This reply means the post landed. Answer with a number and a structure, not a vague "it depends". Slow answers lose the deal, because a founder moves on to the next thing within a day.

Marcus, glad it landed. Here's how it works. I charge $1,800 a month for eight LinkedIn posts, one 600-word newsletter, and one 30-minute call a month where you talk and I record. Month one includes a voice guide I write from your calls and past posts. Nothing goes live until you sign off in writing. Three-month minimum, then month to month. Want me to send the voice guide outline and an invoice, or would you rather talk it through first?

The arithmetic: 8 posts plus 1 newsletter is 9 pieces, and $1,800 divided by 9 is $200 each. State the number you will actually defend. Quote per piece only if they ask.

A monthly package that fits one calm week of work

Design the package around your own time. A realistic month for the plan above looks like this:

  • Week 1: the 30-minute interview call, recorded, then 90 minutes to pull out stories and numbers.
  • Weeks 1 and 2: draft eight posts at about 45 minutes each, so six hours.
  • Week 2: draft the newsletter, two hours.
  • Week 3: revisions. Allow two rounds per piece, and say so in writing.
  • Week 4: schedule the posts and send a one-paragraph results note.

That is roughly 14 hours for $1,800, about $128 an hour. If your hours run past 18, your price is too low or you're allowing too many revisions. Four clients at this size is $7,200 a month and a full workload.

Voice and approval wording

Put three sentences in your agreement and your welcome email. First, nothing is published without written approval from the client. Second, the client owns the posts once paid, and you will not claim authorship. Third, you may mention that you work with them only if they agree. Many ghostwriters keep client names private, and clients expect it.

For approvals, use one line at the bottom of each draft: "Reply 'approved' or send edits. If I hear nothing by 5 p.m. Wednesday, I'll hold this post and use next week's slot." Silence never means yes. Once they sign, send a welcome email and run the first week from a client onboarding checklist. For the agreement itself, see our scope of work template.

Tracking who you pitched

Keep one row per prospect: name, trigger, date of email 1, date of email 2, reply, sample sent, package sent, outcome. Check it every Monday. Most people will not answer. Out of 40 prospects, if 5 reply and 2 take the free post, one signing is a normal month. Tracking tells you which trigger and which hook style are working, so the second batch of 40 is better. Our guide to getting clients as a grant writer uses a different trigger (a funding deadline) for similar work.

Rocketship keeps this log for you and follows up on its own schedule, so you spend your time writing instead of chasing. See how the AI workers run it. Finding the founders who need you is the slow part, and it is the part Rocketship does. Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and both Launch and Frontier start with a 7-day free trial, card required.