Episode 43 - Sumo Logic: Zoe Hawkins' on creating space for curiosity
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Hey folks! Thanks so much to everyone who contributed to this report.
This is the sixth edition of this report. Starting last year, we decided to update the report each year rather than publish a brand new one. This makes it easier to track year-over-year data and make the report easier to find.
This is now the only salary report you’ll find on this website, and it includes a summary of all the data we’ve collected over the past five years. This makes the good, bad and ugly of content marketing income plainly visible.
This year's report is sponsored by Teal, the personal career growth platform that helps you tailor your resume, track your applications, optimize your LinkedIn profile, and more—all so you can land a job faster. Nearly 1 million people have turned to Teal to navigate their job search—and you can, too. Get started here.
Before we dive into the data, we want to briefly outline the purpose of this report. By collecting, analyzing and sharing salary data, we achieve a few things:
Transparency benefits all of us. We believe content marketing is rich with opportunities and this report backs that up. Okay, just a few more notes before we dive in.
Okay, let’s get into the data!
So, how much do content marketers earn?
Average total annual income (full-time and freelance income)
This is up 16.75% over last year—a significant increase.
This data includes all income from all sources, regardless of experience, employment status, gender or ethnicity, meaning that a person could make 90% of their income from a full-time job while supplementing some of their income with some freelance work. Conversely, someone could make 50% of their income from full-time work and 50% from freelance work. All of these variables are included in the average number.
The median annual income is $105,000, a 19% increase from 2023 ($88,256).
Given that the job market was in chaos over the last 12 months, we wouldn’t have been totally surprised to see this number decrease year-over-year.
We have a few theories for this increase:
Here’s how this data has changed over the last few years:
A quick note on the year-over-year comparison: We excluded submissions from people earning less than $20k this year in our analysis this year, as it’s our assumption they aren’t working full-time in content and we need to set a floor threshold. We didn’t exclude them in past years. Had we removed sub-$20k entries from last year (2023), the average income would have been $98,054 instead of $95,379, so the overall trend would be unchanged.
The Superpath audience has grown and evolved quite a bit since we started collecting this data. Way back in 2019, only 36 people filled out our survey (we’ve excluded that data). Last year, we had 509 respondents. This year, we have 314.
It’s hard to nail down exactly how sample bias affects the data, but we do feel confident that the overall trend—up and to the right—is accurate based on everything we’ve observed over the last few years.
As you can see in the chart below, “Count of Respondents by Total Income,” the two most common salary bands were $80,000 to $99,000 and $100,000 to $119,000 (36% of respondents fell in one of these two ranges).
In previous years, the $60k to $79k band was always the most popular salary range (in 2023, 20% of respondents fell in this range). In 2024, only 12.74% of respondents fell into this band.
As we speculated above, it could be that lower-paying positions were eliminated due to a greater reliance on external vendors and the emergence of AI tools. It could also be that junior content marketers were just less excited about the field and didn’t feel as inclined to answer the survey.
The average annual income for people who make more than 50% of their income from a full-time job.
This is up 13.41% over last year ($95,958).
This number is meant to capture data from folks who have full-time jobs, but does include any additional freelance income—e.g. someone who makes $85,000 per year from a full-time job plus an extra $10,000 from freelance work. It’s an imperfect number, but we believe it’s the best representation of how much income the average individual earns. This number also includes profit sharing, stock and all other non-salary compensation. About 59% of full-time employees earn at least some non-salary compensation in addition to their base salary.
Teal Tip: Want to see how much most content marketing roles pay? Pop open Teal's free Chrome extension on 40+ job boards—it'll put the salary range front and center so you can see if a role meets your salary expectations before you apply.
The highest-earning full-time content marketer earned $270,000 (including RSUs and bonuses) without any additional freelance work. A few people earned more with a combined full-time and freelance income.
The average income for people who make more than 50% of their income from freelancing.
This is up 33.67% from last year ($90,691).
This is a reversal of the trend we saw last year, when we saw a surprising 14.27% year-over-year decrease in freelance earnings ($105,787). Overall, freelance earnings have increased 14.59% since 2022.
We had theorized three potential reasons for the drop last year:
We still believe all of these assumptions to be true, so what changed this year?
Again, this is speculation, but smaller in-house content teams may have led to a greater demand for freelancers—especially more senior freelancers who need little management. Freelancers have become more confident in asking for higher rates.
Here’s a quick comparison of full-time vs. freelance income over the past few years. This data isn’t perfect—e.g., a full-time employee who does some freelance work has that extra income included in their total. Because many full-time folks also take on freelance work, their employment income is actually lower than what’s reported here. Note that someone could be classified as a freelancer if they have a part-time job and do freelance work in addition to it.
This is up slightly from last year (21% in 2023).
We asked a new question this year: “If you are employed FTE, were you laid off in 2023?”
Out of the 249 full-time respondents, 40 had been laid off at some point.
Teal Tip: Keep your resume updated as you go so you're not caught on the back foot in the case of a layoff. If you've been impacted and aren't sure where to start or what to do first, this guide can help.
This is up 19.53% over last year ($97,118). This is by far the biggest year-over-year percentage jump we’ve seen since asking this question in 2021.
This is up 5.52% since last year ($88,421), and almost equals the 2022 average ($93,183).
B2B respondents make $22,782 more on average than their B2C/DTC counterparts. Back in 2022, earnings were nearly equal.
It’s worth noting that we had 5x the number of B2B content marketers fill out this year’s survey compared to B2C/D2C folks (as Superpath is tailored more to the B2B community). It’s a smaller sample size and one that we’re not as confident about. Still, the B2C/DTC folks have felt the pain of the last two years’ macro environment more than B2B content marketers.
Note: we also included an “Other” job category for the first time, to be inclusive of content marketers in non-profit, higher-ed, and healthcare. We only had 13 respondents, so the sample size is small, but their average salary was $85,813.
Of course, average income only tells us so much. It's helpful to segment individuals by experience to see what kind of pay you can expect if you stay in this industry. This data includes income from any source and does not delineate between full-time and freelance.
In general, most folks with eight or more years of experience are in the $100k Club, although it’s becoming more common for folks with at least four years of experience too.
Here’s how this data for “Income by Experience” has changed over the past few years. (Note: This is only the second year we’ve collected data for the “13+” category.)
Interestingly, incomes jumped the most for people with three or fewer years of experience compared to previous years. It seems the earnings floor has risen for content marketers. Earnings were also up for the 4-to-7 and 8-to-12 categories.
For folks with 13+ years of experience, income is down year-over-year. However, this is the smallest band by number of respondents, so it can fluctuate a lot based on a few respondents. We also know that many people with 13+ years of experience gravitate towards marketing leadership roles and don’t necessarily identify as content marketers any longer.
Below is a look at the average annual income by job title. We used a simple formula to pull keywords from job titles. Example: “What’s the average annual income of respondents whose job title includes the word ‘Director’?” This data is far from perfect—e.g. it’s possible that a job title like “lead strategist” was counted twice since we are using the same formula for “lead” and “strategist.” For that reason, we’re hesitant to draw any firm conclusions other than job title does matter. And no titles matter quite as much as “Director” and “VP.”
Compared to last year, the “Lead” title saw the biggest increase (19.7%). The “Strategist” title saw the smallest increase (0.22%). No title decreased in average salary.
This section applies primarily to full-time employees. We presented respondents with a list of benefits/perks and asked them to check all that apply.
About 87% of respondents work remotely most of the time (on par with last year’s 89%).
Content marketing is a well-paying field overall but, sadly, income is not consistent for everyone.
An important note about this data: We didn’t have enough respondents to segment further. For this analysis, we bracketed everyone into three racial categories: white, BIPOC (we added Latinx also), or none of the above/choose not to say. Additionally, the survey asked people, “What ethnicity do you identify as?” which meant that we had some responses we were unable to use. For example, some people with race while others responded with their nationality. This question did not provide us with clear data and we will ask a more specific question in the future. We recognize how imperfect this is and are sorry that this data isn’t as thorough as it ought to be.
We asked respondents which gender they currently identify as. We left the field open for folks to respond however they like (i.e. not a dropdown).
Male-identifying respondents saw the largest earnings growth, at 23%. Female-identifying respondents grew their earnings by 13%.
Unfortunately that means the gender pay gap nearly tripled year over year. Women earned about 87 cents on the dollar compared to men. Last year, that gap had shrunk to $5,460, or about 95 cents on the dollar.
Non-binary and gender-fluid folks saw the smallest earnings growth, at only 1%. They earned about 79 cents on the dollar versus males. Note that we had a small sample size of 8 non-binary or gender-fluid respondents.
Globally, white content marketers reported earning $37,428 more than their BIPOC peers ($117,321 compared to $79,892). The racial pay gap also increased year over year by 74%, which is really disheartening.
Again, this is based on a small sample size of BIPOC respondents. 45 respondents (15%) identified as BIPOC, compared to 216 white respondents (70%). 15% did not indicate their race.
As you’ll see below, location plays a big factor in this comparison. e.g., BIPOC men in the US make $136k vs. $56k BIPOC men in “other” countries (not US, Canada or UK).
Unfortunately, we believe that the $37,428 disparity between all white vs all BIPOC is more representative.
The gap is present for both men and women. White men earned $41,784 more on average than their BIPOC male peers. White women earned $38,590 more than their BIPOC female peers.
However, BIPOC men actually saw a 19.9% increase in average annual income—the largest annual increase of the four groups. We only had 13 BIPOC male respondents, so the sample size is very small. Our decision to remove respondents with less than $20,000 in salary this year also impacted the year-over-year comparison. Several 2023 BIPOC male respondents had reported under $10,000 in annual income, but we did not remove them at the time.
Teal Tip: How do you know what your skills are worth? Or how much to negotiate? Use the Teal Chrome extension to compare salary ranges—and check out this list of our 30 go-to salary websites:
The increase in both gender and racial pay gaps can mostly be attributed to BIPOC women’s 7% decrease in average income. White men's and women’s incomes grew at almost the same rate (17.7% and 16.7%, respectively).
As we’ve noted in past years, the overwhelming majority of American, Canadian and British respondents were white, while the majority of folks from other countries were BIPOC. The ethnicity data definitely exposes wage gaps, but it also speaks to the economies of each country represented.
To more closely examine pay discrepancies, we looked at experience as it relates to ethnicity and gender for the first time. We found that, overall, white and BIPOC respondents had similar levels of experience, but far more respondents were white. Because we mostly look at averages, this greatly affects the data. As an example, no BIPOC men had 13+ years of experience and only two respondents had 8 to 12 years of experience. This means only two senior salaries factored into the averages in the chart above. So while it provides some additional context on pay gaps, it opens the door to another line of questioning. Namely, why aren't there more senior BIPOC content marketers?
As of last year, we started asking folks if they lived in the US, Canada, UK, or somewhere else. Here are the average incomes of people by country.
While those in the US are still the highest income earners at $122,301, they saw the smallest annual income growth (8.8%). Those in the UK saw 32% annual income growth (perhaps due to the rise in better-paying, remote jobs based in the US). Those in the “Other” group grew by 49.69%.
To find more clarity, we pulled average income by gender and ethnicity, then compared respondents from the US, Canada and the UK to the rest of the world.
We as content marketers need to be vigilant about racism and sexism in our industry. There's still a lot of work to be done.
Some of this data is uplifting, but some of the findings are incredibly frustrating. Here are a few things you can do now:
Come join our Slack group if you want to talk with other content folks about this report and other career development topics. There are already 18,000 of us learning and supporting one another and we'd love to have you.
Any questions about this report? Feel free to DM us on Slack or email Jimmy personally at jimmy at superpath dot co.
We also want to give one final shout out to our friends at Teal for their support. It’s a great tool—you can learn more and signup for free here.
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