We were overwhelmed by our 11-hour days and stressful jobs. Now we earn £10,000 a month while travelling. It may sound too good to be true, but it’s easier than you think
Scroll through LinkedIn, the social media channel for professionals, and you’ll see inspirational post after post from high-ranking chief executives, team leaders and entrepreneurs.
But behind many of these motivational messages are teams of ghost-writers who make a living from writing them.
It was when writing his own posts about navigating the world of work at the start of the year that Elliot Cook realised there was big money to be made.
Elliot, 23, and his girlfriend Lucy Stott had just quit their jobs in recruitment, which Elliot disliked for the long 11-hour days, and planned to go travelling around Asia together. The couple, who had recently graduated and met at the University of Liverpool in 2022, started to write posts on their personal LinkedIn profiles about their experience of the difficult job market for graduates.
Elliot says: ‘We were running from our lives. I was hearing my friends say how rubbish the job market was. I panicked that we had quit our jobs – what if there were no alternative jobs for us? That’s when we started posting on LinkedIn.’
These posts quickly gained traction – and in March, while travelling through Vietnam, Elliot received a message from a business owner. The entrepreneur wanted to pay Elliot and Lucy to write similar posts on his behalf.
The pair had stumbled on to a lucrative new venture, which would go on to pay them up to £10,000 a month. Over the next two weeks, they got to know the business owner well enough to portray the owner’s persona in their posts.
‘LinkedIn marketers’ Elliot Cook and Lucy Stott started to write posts on their personal LinkedIn profiles four years ago
Elliot and Lucy have now turned ghost-writing LinkedIn posts for business professionals into their full-time jobs and make more than £10,000 a month
Elliot, who is from Brighton, says: ‘It was overwhelming. I had a lot of imposter syndrome. But we gathered what personality he wanted to put across and learnt how he wanted to portray his brand’s image.
‘We came up with a strategy of what we wanted to do together. From the posts, he started to get visibility and generate some business in his inbox.’
Now Elliot and Lucy, 22, have turned ghost-writing LinkedIn posts for business professionals into their full-time jobs under their company Rova.
‘Those few months in Vietnam taught me more than my business degree. We worked 12 to 16 hours a day,’ says Elliot.
‘We spoke to business owners and watched YouTube videos about how to write for LinkedIn in a way that transfers into sales.’
Elliot and Lucy now call themselves ‘LinkedIn marketers’. They promote services by writing LinkedIn posts that tell a business professional’s personal stories.
Not only does this boost that person’s visibility and public profile, it can also directly lead to new business. One of their clients has recently closed an £8,000 deal off the back of one of their posts.
To get enough information, Elliot and Lucy speak to the business professionals for 90 minutes, asking them all about their experiences, what makes them different, and any other stories they can relate back to their industry. The couple then go away and write 12 posts a month for that person, to help them attract potential clients on LinkedIn.
The business leaders then upload these posts on their personal LinkedIn page, rather than the business’s professional profile. This is key to the success, says Elliot. ‘It gives you a chance to be personable, to be yourself and to make people want to work with you because you’re you.’
Where required, the young duo have another two calls with the business leader on a monthly basis to gather more information for new posts.
They typically work with professionals working in artificial intelligence, sales or property. Elliot adds that it works best for high-ticket businesses.
To find new clients, the pair have continued to write LinkedIn posts for their own profiles, chronicling the successes of their new marketing business.
Lucy and Elliot’s business has an estimated profit margin of 95 per cent, because there are so few overheads
Elliot says: ‘When I came home in July my mum didn’t really understand what it was all about. But I explained I was making more money than my corporate sales job in recruitment.’
At the beginning, the couple charged £899 a month for a three-month contract.
They have since increased their rates to £1,800 a month given their success. They currently have seven clients.
They also offer a £399 one-hour coaching call, giving business owners a plan for their current LinkedIn profile.
Last month, Elliot and Lucy made a combined £10,000. He says they live frugally and are currently saving to buy their first home together.
Elliot says: ‘I despised my recruitment job. I hated the long working hours – I’d get in at 8am and leave at 7.30pm. Now we have the freedom to work on our own terms, to work from wherever in the world and with whoever we want.’
The only real expense for the business is a subscription for a software that allows the pair to publish a post on someone else’s LinkedIn profile on their behalf.
They also pay for invoicing software and for an artificial intelligence tool called Claude Design for their website and promotional materials.
However, Elliot is adamant ghost-writers should never use AI to write posts (see panel, left). ‘Business owners will figure it out. If you’re going to charge someone you need to understand exactly what it is you are doing.’
He estimates their profit margin is around 95 per cent because there are so few overheads.
While there are other LinkedIn ghost-writers, the industry is far from saturated, he adds.
‘It’s perfect for young people who understand social media algorithms and are used to writing essays. Postgraduates will have that in abundance.’
Writing the perfect message
1. Make it about you. A personalised post is vital, says LinkedIn ghost-writer Elliot Cook. ‘Share a real moment from your life, not general advice. Add details only you know, such as the place, the number, the time.’
2. Give away the ending in the first two lines. When readers are scrolling LinkedIn, they can typically only see the first few lines, explains Elliot. To read the rest, they need to click a ‘see more’ button. ‘Use those two lines to say where your story starts and where it ends. Then use the rest of the post to explain how you got there. Make people curious, not confused.’
3. Don’t sound like a robot. Stay clear of AI when writing posts. It may seem like a good idea to instruct a chatbot to write them, but Elliot says writing messages personally is what makes them stand out. ‘There is a lot of “AI slop” on LinkedIn right now,’ he says. ‘Stay away from it. You’ll start sounding like everyone else.’ To make sure your post doesn’t read like AI, he suggests cutting out em dashes (long dashes) as well as words like ‘actually’ and ‘even’, which are typically used in AI-generated content.
4. Write the way you talk. LinkedIn users tend to fill posts with jargon. But Elliot says the key is to use simple words ‘as if you’re writing a children’s book’. Keep sentences short and leave a gap after every line or two. ‘Start some lines with “but”, “so” or “because” as these keep people reading.’
