Head of Content Earning $105,000/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?

My first full-time job was Director of Content for a tiny startup and my salary was $50,000.

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

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

I’m now making $105,000 as Head of Content.

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

I jumped from $50,000 to $95,000 when I moved from a small Israeli startup to a large international company.

What is your most valuable skill?

I know how to use data to build and defend an effective editorial strategy.

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

I have! He’s my former manager and he taught me how to brutally edit to build a great story. He also taught me how and when to push back on leadership to make sure my editorial calendar stays on-track and I’m not just saying yes to people because they’re more senior than me.

What skills or habits help you thrive at work?

I ask “why” all the time, even when it’s annoying.

Leadership is often guilty of asking for things to be turned into blog posts on a whim without thinking about impact on editorial strategy. Asking why, instead of saying no, gives us a chance to talk it out and see if there’s another angle that could work or if the idea should just be out to bed. It makes me look, and often become, more collaborative while protecting the editorial strategy I’ve worked so hard to build.

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

Making it to $100k isn’t always a linear process. Be willing to take a temporary salary cut to join the right company if you think it will eventually take you closer to your goals. I left a large company to join a smaller one and took a salary cut to do so, but that move gave me the opportunity to take on a lot of responsibility that I didn’t have at a larger org and negotiate with leadership. This position gave me the skills I needed to springboard into my next role, which paid 25% more—and 10% more than the role I’d had before.

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

I'm a woman living in Tel Aviv, Israel.