Hello!
Does anyone have any research in the success of using those professional blog writing services that write under your name versus doing it yourself? I would categorize guest blogging under doing it yourself as that would still have the real authors name…and reputation…attached to it.
Thanks in advance for your input!

As a professional ghost blogger, I can tell you that this is any service like any other ghost writing service. We’re basically outsourced marketers and we don’t put our names on our work, any more than speechwriters do it for politicians, copywriters do it for marketing brochures, and graphic designers put it on billboards and signs.

We also interview our clients and they give us the information, so we only transcribe it. In that sense, we’re no more than glorified typists, which is why we stick our client’s names on the piece.

The benefit the client gets is that 1) we know what we’re doing, and actually know how to write, and 2) we know what works for search engine optimization.

We’ve had some great successes with our clients who have seen some positive results. I can’t give exact numbers, but I can share some results privately.

I have also written for other sites, like @ldylarke. The site I wrote for was a friend that I had worked with in the past. He had a list of subjects and I think that there was only one I would not do for lack of expertise. He was very happy with the results.I was also asked to write the technical details for someone that was writing an xyz for dummies book. [step by step stuff] I wrote how to do it and the author added some details do give the authors style. Again, the client was happy with the results.

@robertdecker As a freelance writer, I do ghostwriting for some bloggers and have found they get good results with it.  The only issues I notice when writing for these clients is that sometimes they ask me to write about topics where they don’t follow the same advice they want me to write about (ie. write about the benefits of having social sharing buttons on your blog when they don’t have any on their own).  The other issue is some clients have multiple ghostwriters because they want a huge volume of content to put on their site and on others.  With multiple ghostwriters, the client ends up sounding just a bit different from one post to the next.  

Overall, for the clients I do ghostwriting for, they seem to get a lot of good results from it.  

@glengorham, @erikdeckers, @ldylarke, @richardmclaughlin, @kristi-hines
Thank you everyone for your insight.
To more fully explain my situation, I do freelance for local businesses, and have no problem ghost blogging for them. It just makes sense to me to have them use a local person who knows what they are doing, knows the region, and knows how to get it done. It was the larger faceless pay-per-blog sites that concerned me, as one of my clients was thinking of using one of those. Twenty dollars for a blog, or something like that. Again, you have answered my question awesomely, and reflected what my concerns were, so now I can go back and use my ammo with a little more confidence and hopefully get a little more business.
I would be happy to hear any other thoughts on the topic.
Thanks again!

A blog that claims to be a personal one should be exactly that, personal, and that means it is written by the blogger, full stop. Guest blogs are great, so long as the guest is clearly identified, and has something interesting and relevant to say.A business by definition is ghost blogged, but it is my view that one person should carry the responsibility to reflect the businesses raison d’etre in what is written,. and be known, a bit like a columnist in one of those old world things, oh yes, a newspaper!. My blog, at Strategyaudit has 800 odd posts over 4 or so years, every single one is mine, so it reflects my views and mode of expression, and is my responsibility.