Step 1 Gain experience

Like any other professional or paraprofessional field, you need to get your feet wet before being hired by anyone. Begin by writing some articles or web copy for associatedcontent.com. Be sure to pick topics that are appealing to everyone, such as saving money, when selecting your first few articles. By doing so, you will have more readers, which will add to your credibility as a ghostwriter. Keep copies of your work as these first articles become part of your portfolio.

Step 2 Get out there

Now that you have a working portfolio, become a freelancer on sites such as guru.com or elance.com Through these sites, people in need of a ghostwriter will post their project and bid on the ghostwriter. In some cases, if they look at your work, you will get hired directly and also start getting paid for your services.

Step 3 Set up a business

A great way to attract more work is to establish you business and post your portfolio on your site. Then, look through all the major job classified sections in the world, such as writer.com or monster.com, to find work as a ghostwriter. You should consider expanding throughout the world as many other business around the globe need ghostwriters fluent in English language to help promote their business.

Step 4 Advertise your business

Set up Twitter and Face book accounts to promote your business. You should also use LinkedIn also to get some jobs. Also consider placing small ads in professional social networks, such as those on Ning.com, where professionals can quickly review your work and hire you. There is less competition by doing so.

Step 5 Be professional and competitive

Once you begin to get writing assignments, be sure to return them on schedule and be courteous when communicating with clients. You should also look at what other ghostwriters are doing and find out where their contracts are coming from. Try ghostwritingforyou.net to search for a list of ghostwriters.

Remember, ghostwriting will be a huge field in the coming years, so don’t delay. Please visit stepsto.com for more great business advice.

Step 1: According to Roger Ibbotson, chairman and founder of Ibbotson Associates and a professor in the practice of finance at the Yale School of Management, what really drives performance over the long term is asset allocation – the assignment of money to different categories of assets, such as large- and small-cap funds, international funds, bonds and cash.

“Over the long run, what drives performance is not whether you’ve picked the hot mutual fund, but which asset classes you hold in your portfolio and in what proportion,” said Ibbotson.

To develop a long-term investment strategy, investors should evaluate their goals, time horizon and risk tolerance to determine an appropriate asset allocation and then select mutual funds to fill it.

An individual’s investment goals, such as funding retirement, college or a vacation home, tend to guide the time horizon of the investment. If the investment horizon is fairly short, it is recommended that the investor maintain a conservative portfolio – one that has returns that don’t fluctuate too much. If the investment time horizon is longer, an investor can be more aggressive in the early stages and move to a more conservative asset allocation as the goal nears.

Since everyone has a different emotional reaction to sudden changes in their portfolio value, it’s important for investors to know their risk tolerance. This will determine an investor’s ability to handle declines in the value of investments.

“Investors have a tendency to let emotions drive their investment decisions,” Ibbotson said. “Chasing highflying funds that may have already peaked and selling on downturns can greatly depreciate the value of your portfolio.”

Step 2: Experts also suggest that investors evaluate their portfolio performance as a whole rather than look at how each individual investment is doing. Investors reduce their risk by investing in a variety of asset classes with the hope that when one is doing poorly, others will do well. – NU