Posted by You already know you can hire a ghost writer to write just about anything for you, put your own name on it, and call it your own.
Marketers do it all the time. After all, just because you’re good at marketing doesn’t mean you’re good at writing or even have the time to write all the blogposts, emails, sales letter and so forth that you need.
Celebrities do this, too. For example, when a movie star or entrepreneur or CEO comes out with a book, there is an excellent chance that book was written by someone else.
So far so good?
What I’m about to tell you might immediately raise a red flag for a few people. And yet, it’s simply a variation on ghost writing.
You could think of it as ‘ghost art,’ I suppose.
I know of a woman who outsources original artwork and then sells prints of it on Etsy, Ebay and other sites.
She hires artists to create original abstract art. And she’ll even find existing artwork that she likes, and then ask the artist she’s hiring to do something in the same style.
She likes to stick to abstract art since it’s easier to make and harder to recognize if it came from one particular artist or several artists all working in the same style.
She especially likes to have a lot of color in her paintings, since she’s found the bright, happy looking paintings seem to sell especially well.
She has the artists sign a non-disclosure agreement that says they are signing over all rights to the artwork.
From the original artwork, she gets prints made and sells them online as limited editions, as well as selling the original for a much higher price.
And she has an assistant handle all of the listing and product fulfillment.
It gets even better – she’s actually created several different identities as an artist, so that she can ‘work’ in several different styles to accommodate different customers’ tastes.
She is careful to never say anything that is untrue. And she never does say that she painted the paintings.
After paying for expenses and her assistant, she’s clearing about $3500 a month.
Not a huge sum, but considering how little work she puts into it, it’s a very interesting idea!