Moving Away from Pen Names and Ghostwriting

Do you use a pen name? Do you ghostwrite for others or write for content sites that don't have any plans to put your name on your work?

I recently started using a pen name for work through a particular site. For the longest time, I didn't want to. It's MY work and I wanted MY name on it.

However, this site has editors, and those editors often change my work. Usually they make it better, but sometimes they introduce mistakes. It's embarrassing to have my name on an article that contains mistakes I didn't even make.

So, for that reason I started using a pen name at that site.

I also do a lot of ghostwriting, so my name wouldn't go on any of that, anyway. The only downside to doing that kind of work is that it makes my online portfolio look weak. I only have two sites with portfolios of my work on them. There are other sites I could put my work on, but I've not heard good things about them and they generally pay pennies in revenue share. Many of them aren't well-respected.

For all you other writers out there, I pose a question: How do you go about 'making a name for yourself' and getting other writing gigs when you've been a 'behind the scenes' writer for so long?

Sure, you can point someone to work and say "I really did write that, I just used that pen name," but you don't have much proof. Ditto pointing a prospective client to a current client's site and saying you wrote that copy or that article. That completely destroys any confidentiality your current client was looking for by not putting your name on the stuff you wrote.

I'd like to move from ghostwriting to writing more under my own name. I've been a freelance writer since 1994, and made a living at it all that time. I've written for newspapers, content sites, and private clients - but almost all of it was/is under a name that is not mine, or under no name at all.

Thoughts and suggestions from other writers and the general public would be much appreciated!