Anyone else in SaaS feel like the 40 hour work week is a myth? No? Just me?
Cool.
It’s rare I spend only 8 hours a day working for my W2. Lucky for me, I like it, and it gives me content ideas for things I am building on the side.
But what am I building on the side? How does The Little Ghost (my biz) make money?
There are four buckets and I’ll break down approximately how much each bucket made me in 2024. (2025 isn’t over yet but I will come in just shy of 2x these numbers when the year wraps).
How I made side income last year:
Ghostwriting/ Personal Brand Consulting. I charge on number of posts or on a monthly retainer, and give pricing breaks for long-term contracts. My average ghostwriting contract is about 4k/mo (it was half that for most of 2024 so keep that in mind when I show you the totals) and includes onboarding, brand identity formation, content strategy, sourcing calls, editing calls and as many revisions in the shared doc as needed. It includes 16 posts I write for you and my phone number so you can text me when you need me. Because I write all of the content (I know, I am just not smart enough to prompt ChatGPT to get anything useful) I can only manage up to 3 clients any given month. I give a discount if they sign longer than a 3 month contract, and there are random add on/ a la carte things I’ve done for a handful of clients as needed. I am not the cheapest. I am not the most expensive. If you’ve ever wondered what ghostwriting costs, there ya go. Use me as an example but know that the range is VAST.
Public speaking. This one is new as of this year. Sometimes I get compensation, sometimes I only get my travel covered. I love teaching and training. I had 2 paid in-person speaking gigs last year and 2 paid virtual engagements. I already have a gig locked for this upcoming January and I am HYPED.
Consulting. This bucket is the most nebulous because it can be anything from brand consulting (like ghostwriting without me writing) to training sales teams on social selling. I charged $500 an hour to individuals for strategy consultations and $150/head for team trainings. I bucket this differently from webinars or on stage speaking gigs because I am usually bringing actionable resources, tailoring it to a specific team/organization and giving them templates and frameworks to keep after the training is done. I love this stuff because it forces me to look at each company I work with as it’s own thing. Makes me feel like a true operator and I like helping people solve their business problems.
Influencer partnerships. This bucket is by far my favorite, because people HATE it. The outside world looks in and gets really frustrated about influencers spending 10 minutes on a post and getting paid $$$. But the way I see it, I spent years creating content and giving away my best tips for free to my community. I built an audience and cultivated trust over hundreds and hundreds of pieces of content. If brands see value in that trust and rapport and I find alignment in the product, why shouldn’t I rent that virtual real estate to them? I didn’t have a standard rate for 2024 (I do now) and I turned down more work than I accepted (more on that in a future issue). But content creation is easily my favorite aspect of my day job AND my side hustle. I have dreams and plans to expand to other platforms in 2025 and cannot wait to see what this part of my business looks like in a year.
So what were my totals? (I’m rounding because 00s are just easier to work with):
Ghostwriting: $36,000
Public Speaking: $5,500 (and a free trip to Paris)
Consulting: $16,000
Influencer Partnerships: $40,500
Total: $98,000
^And this was with taking time off from ghostwriting, having no super clear pricing structure for the first few months of the year, no set rate for brand partnerships, and really just winging it across the board.
Some changes I am making next year:
I started working with a brand manager who negotiates all my speaking + influencer deals. Shout out Aneesh! But I am really leaning into his expertise when I think about all my revenue streams.
Set pricing list for consulting (I mostly charge by engagement, not hourly, these days)
Raised my ghostwriting rates and got pickier about the clients I work with. I recently hired the crew over at Duo to help me rethink packaging. Will report back on that collaboration!
Signed longer-term contracts for almost everything (if we’re working together, I want to be invested in your success to the same degree you’re investing in my expertise)
Getting really clear on who I help across all the side work I do
Capacity planning (so ya girl doesn’t burn out)
I also am actively turning my house into a duplex and will rent out half of in starting in Feb. So now real estate is a side hustle I guess.
I hope this was helpful. My goal with this newsletter is to peel back the curtain on all the questions I have about everyone else’s business. It’s not perfect, it’s not always pretty, but it is what it is.
Next issue, I’m gonna break down my process for cold-outbounding to brands to work with as an influencer. If brand deals aren’t your bag, feel free to ignore – but if that’s your jam, I’ll give you my exact sequence, email copy, and process to land net new brand partnerships.
See ya then!
Tools I’m Loving:
While I am a marketer by day and a ghostwriter by night, I actually spend most of my day doing a job that looks a lot more like sales. Running influencer programs is really similar to running a sales cycle. I prospect, I negotiate. I even demo. People need to know what they’re getting themselves into when they collab with brands.
But I started to get overwhelmed by the time-suck of demoing especially when people really needed 3 mins to just play around with a tool to understand it’s value. So I started using Consensus and I have to say, I’m never going back. If you’re a seller or a marketer, AI-powered a-sync/on demand demos are THE WAY TO GO.
Saves so much time, allows for your prospects, partners or customers to get their hands on a sandbox version of your product and really take it for a test drive. In the age of AI, people show up to you 80% informed of the market, the solution + how your product helps. What they really need is to get their hands on it to really wrap their heads around the problem. Consensus helps you build those on-demand demo stage so you can just send them.
They just rolled out Consensus for Marketing which even has a mobile friendly version to make sharing a product experience seamless. Check em out, thank me laterrrrrr.