Nicolas ColeCo-Founder Ship 30 for 30, Premium Ghostwriting Academy

The Two Types Of Ghostwriting Clients You Can Work With

16 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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1:07

In this monologue, Nicolas Cole explains that ghostwriters typically encounter two distinct client categories. Brand clients prioritize long‑term thought leadership, audience growth, and email list building, and they are not driven by precise performance metrics; they simply assume that more content and more subscribers are inherently beneficial. Direct‑response clients, by contrast, are fixated on short‑term metrics such as the number of leads generated per piece of content and conversion rates, treating each output as a measurable sales funnel. Cole argues that working with brand‑focused clients is generally easier and more rewarding, recommending ghostwriters lean toward that side of the market.

Chapters

In ghostwriting, you end up working with two different types of clients. You have brand clients, people that aren't as concerned with metrics. I'll say it that way. They're not people who want to run Facebook ads and go, I spend $5, I expect to make $10. Brand clients are more interested in high-level thought leadership. They understand default assumption. If I create content on social platforms, more good things happen. If I collect more email addresses, more good things happen. If I have more people on my newsletter, more good things happen. I don't need math to tell me that it's a good idea to create content on the internet or to capture email addresses. And there are a lot of business owners who fall into that category. The other type of client is one that is the opposite of that. They are very direct response marketing focused. If I'm going to create 14 pieces of content in a week, how many leads am I generating? How many of those leads convert into customers? They hyper-obsess over those types of metrics. You can do that. It is just a lot harder. Those are the two types of clients that you're going to inevitably interact with. My recommendation to everyone is I would lean more on the brand side because I think it's a significantly easier outcome to generate. You're not doing it, I help you do it.