Director of Content Marketing Earning $100,000/year

Welcome to another post in the $100k Club series. You can see the full series here. This is "My Morning Routine" for content marketing folks making six figures. The goal is to shed light on the skills and habits that enable people to achieve lucrative jobs and help get more people in this club.

These will be anonymous and updated regularly. If you make more than $100k/year and want to contribute, email me.

For more info on content marketing salaries, check out our salary report.

If you'd like to see more info on salary by job title, check out these resources: Content Marketing Manager Salary, Content Strategist Salary, Head of Content Salary, and Content Director Salary.

What was your first full-time job in content? What was the salary?

I started out as a copywriter earning $45,000 as my annual salary.

List out your income by year for as long as you've been working in content marketing

• 2017 - $45,000
• 2018 - $50,000
• 2019 - $62,500
• 2020 - $75,000
• 2021 - $100,000

How much do you earn today? What's your job title?

Today I earn $100,000 and as a Director of Content Marketing.

What's the single biggest salary jump you've made? (either from job-hopping or a promotion/raise)

Going from $75,000 to $100,000 was my biggest increase.

What is your most valuable skill?

My ability to translate other peoples' big picture ideas (which are often a bit nebulous/chaotic) into actionable strategies.

What's the best book you've ever read on writing, marketing, sales, business or productivity? (Feel free to suggest more than one!)

• Stephen King - On Writing
• David Allen - Getting Things Done
• Dan Kennedy - Ultimate Sales Letter
• Malcolm Gladwell - Tipping Point

Have you had a career mentor/coach? If so, how did you find them and what have you learned from them?

I had a mentor early in my career. She was my manager—I was lucky that she had a personal interest in mentorship. I learned a lot about how to navigate the corporate world and how so much of any job is managing others.

What skills or habits help you thrive at work?

Never leave a meeting without an agreed action item. Get it out of your brain and into a system. Assume your memory is fallible. Build processes that allow you to make strategic tradeoffs, rather than sacrificing at the margins.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to join the $100k club?

Be a sponge. In content, your role is to distill complex subject matter into something digestible (and hopefully interesting). It's all fair game—test your research skills by writing on technical topics, interviewing engineers and artists, and exploring all sides of an issue. Treat learning as a skill to be sharpened, not a means to an end, and you'll be able to write about anything.

Where do you live? What is your gender and ethnicity?

I'm a white woman living in Los Angeles, California.