Ghostwriting is a good business model if you are looking to earn money online: it costs virtually nothing to get started, it is in-demand, and if you are good it is very easy to earn a faithful following. However along the path of their career, many ghostwriters hit a brick wall and hate waking up in the morning to do the work they know in their souls they are supposed to do.

They reluctantly open up their computers and it will take them all the willpower and motivation in the world just to get started, and muster all the self-control in the world as just to stick with the project until it is done as well.

Why does this happen to a writer’s life ninety-nine percent of the time? There is never one universal reason that applies to everyone, but a sizeable chunk of that can be attributed to small decisions they make that make it harder for no one but themselves.

Let’s look at the tiny but mighty bad habits that can make or break ghostwriters, depending if they do them or not and to what degree:

1. Habitually Procrastinating – I believe a pesky little procrastinator lives in each and every writer’s body. However, the difference lies in how often and how much we feed that little procrastinator or not that makes it turn into a humongous, self-destructing giant.

By the time you realize that you have raised a monster, it is usually too late: work piles up, deadlines glare at you from your desktop, you pull stressful all-nighters, and you suddenly become a brilliant inventor of all kinds of excuses.

If you’re good enough, you will manage to pull this off. But eventually, it will wear you down and if you give, it will affect the quality and quantity of your work and heaven forbid—tarnish your reputation a tad with your clients.

2. Not double checking before submitting – eager to finish your work, you may be tempted to hit the send and submit button right away.

But before you do and give in to the temptation that reading it from top to bottom is a waste of precious time, do yourself a favor and go over your work once more.

You’ll be surprised at how many misspellings, typos, and words and phrases which you should have deleted in your draft stage are still there waiting for you to edit.

Double checking before submitting not only saves you time resending a corrected version of your work, it also help you save face. So do you?

3. Charging inappropriate rates – ghostwriters may charge too high or too low for themselves, but it is usually the case of too low.

It is not their fault—many writers are too shy and/ or reluctant to charge much for their work because it is hard to put a price tag on a creation that came from your own mind, as opposed to tangible goods with tangible prices on raw materials.

But it is important for writers to realize that they hold both a talent and a skill. Not everyone can write well at will, and not many are willing to do it either.

Once they realize how in-demand their services are and how businesses in need of content won’t thrive without what they have to offer, they will soon realize how valuable they really are.

It also doesn’t help that most marketers, especially Internet Marketers, make them feel ashamed for raising their rates.

As the former Ghostwriter to the Gurus Tiffany Dow once said, she had once transcribed a seminar teaching marketers on how to get something for nothing from these poor ghostwriters and make them feel like they aren’t worth much.

I think this is the main reason why most of them end up in frustration, loss of inspiration, and burn out, and never earn enough to sustain a living and quit their day jobs.

For all three bad habits mentioned, this shouldn’t be the case. Treat your writing like a business, because it is. And lastly, know that you’re important as a writer, because you are.