Senior Content Designer Earning $156,000/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, fill out the form here.

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?

$14/hr, or $28,000

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

• 2017: 28,000
• 2018: 39,000
• 2019: 80,000
• 2020: 110,000
• 2021: 130,000
• 2022: 144,000
• 2023: 156,000

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

Sr. Content Designer, and I earn $78/hr as a contractor with Google.

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

I went from a layoff at an agency where I was paid $38,000 to making $40/hr as a contractor.

What is your most valuable skill?

My ability to connect disparate threads of thought, and bring them together in a cohesive voice.

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

Atomic Habits would be one that I’ve read and encountered everywhere.

Outside of the usual, I would say that Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, with a good commentary, is a text that applies to almost any discipline.

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

I’ve had several mentors over the years. Usually they emerged when I showed the willingness to learn something more than what my basic job entailed. In the last couple months, I’ve actually leaned on LinkedIn more for finding coaches who resonate with me and know how to articulate the challenges I face being a flowery writer at heart.

What skills or habits help you thrive at work?

Counter-intuitively: I’ve trained myself to work without coffee, as I discovered later in my career that it was sapping me of my true creativity, and leaving my writing rather dull and formulaic.

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

While it’s wise to find your niche as a content creator, you should always be versatile and willing to learn skills that are outside of your trade. Since all of the work that we do occurs in the digital realm, you will be more confident and authoritative in your writing if you know the web and (some) coding well.

Where do you live?

Brooklyn, NY