Ghost Writers

I never ever dreamed that I would end up being a ghost writer. So, how did I become one?  Inadvertently of course.

I spend most of my time surfing the net for information. In the beginning, it was just needlework websites and online libraries. Slowly, it expanded to all my areas of interest. At one point I mused, "why not make some money out of it?"

So, with my nephew egging me on, I monetized my blog. I am making money. But it is  oh! so slow. At one point, I lost interest in the monetizing.

I then joined associated content and wrote a couple of articles. When the articles were published, I was exhilarated. I was on a high for exactly  2 days and then nothing. I received a few emails from friends and relatives with their view point.  Then silence. No more reviews and no money either. There was no motivation to continue. I then started surfing the net for content writing jobs. (This is something I am familiar with as I worked as a content writer a couple of years back. I gave up after the first 8 months. I enjoyed the writing. But, the payment was never on time. Sometimes, I had to send repeated reminders.) I found one - a writing job, I mean. The pay was pittance. But what the heck? It was better than pay per numbers of impressions.

I realised 4 articles later, that the lady who hired me was not a principal. All my assignments were given to me via google chat. Would you believe it? I decided to quit. I naively expected to be paid for the articles I sent her. Just yesterday, I discovered one of them published under someone else's name.

How did I manage to find the needle in a haystack?

Plagium.

I was checking the articles I wrote for my current employer ( yes, I found a genuine content writing job with an established company a couple of days later.) for plagiarism. I thought, "why not check all the articles I've ever written while I am at it?"

Guess what?

I found 4 of my articles published under the names of other supposed experts. They probably don't know even the little I do about the subject; considering the fact that both I did both the research and the writing for the 4 articles I wrote.

Now, I know I should be skeptical when I read articles by experts.

I thought I was a web content developer. Do I also call myself a ghost writer?