Over the past few weeks, I have learned a very valuable lesson... If you want something done right do it yourself. I decided to pay someone to write something for me, to test the waters of a ghost writing partnership. This is a recap of my journey with ghost writing.

   Let me define the term ghost writer; Ghost Writer - a person whose job it is to write material for someone else who is the named author. I can hear your inner-voices saying, "Josh aren't you an author, why are you hiring someone else to write for you?"  Yes I am an author and could have done the job myself, but i decided to test out the waters. I used the site upwork.com to find a free lancer. The process was fairly simple. You set up an account as someone looking to hire a worker. You then create a job ad that lays out what you are looking for and how much you are willing to pay for the job. You get to send the ad to some of the best rated authors. Other than that, freelancers can contact you in regards to getting the contract. The site has an app that has a nice messenger to allow you to speak with the freelancers throughout the duration of the contract.

   I received many applications for my request, it struck me as odd that all of the writers were not from North America. After speaking with all the clients, I decided to go with a writer who showed passion in the idea. Communication was essential, I had to give the writer a general idea of what exactly what i was looking for. After giving them the terms of the agreement a contract was signed. After a milestone was reached, I was sent the work that had been done up to that point in time. If the work was up to par, then some of the funds were released. I had originally thought that the job would take about a month or two to complete. The job took this person only two weeks.

   Once the work was completed, I read it from start to finish. The work looked "perfect" in my eyes, hey I was ready to run with it. After having ca couple of people read excerpts from it, I decided to look at it as a consumer. I liked the skeleton of the work but hated the execution. So I had to decided to redo the whole thing, So I lost money on this investment, not much but I don't like to lose.

   The purpose of this post was really just me going over my journey with hiring a ghost writer. I'm not saying that outcome reflects the average outcome of hiring a ghost writer. If you decide to hire someone to do work in your place, just make sure that you don't review the work with rose colored glasses. Hey I do some ghost writing for sites.