Senior Content Marketing Manager Earning $145,000/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?

I worked for a large healthcare organization managing their blog and social media. I made 45,000 per year.

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

Freelancing part-time USD (gross before expenses)

• 2016 - $45,000
• 2017 - $45,000
• 2018 - $65,000
• 2019 - $70,000
• 2020 - $79,000
• 2021 - $85,000
• 2022 - $100,000
• 2023 - $145,000

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

145,000, Sr. Content Marketing Manager

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

45,000 — Job hopping.

What is your most valuable skill?

I'm a dot connector and understand highly technical concepts and products.

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

This is a little outside the box, but recently read Wolfpack by Abby Wambach and loved the leadership principles. It really helped me as I thought about leveling up in my career and leading a content team.

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

I've had a variety of leaders invest in me throughout the years. I was incredibly lucky to work closely with senior leadership early in my career and I learned early on how to prove out the value of content marketing and why it's critical to tie everything I do back to business goals/revenue. That's set me apart.

What skills or habits help you thrive at work?

I work remotely, so being able to control my environment has been huge for me. I'm not the type of writer that can just turn on the creativity. I need the space to sit with topics and an environment that helps me feel dialed in. I do my best deep writing first thing in the morning, straight from my bedroom so I don't get distracted by any tasks or do-dos.

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

I volunteered for every opportunity I could find that I thought would teach me something or get me in a room with people who were smarter than me. It made me incredibly well-rounded and able to hold my own in business conversations so that I could ultimately articulate content's value to the company in a way that leaders would understand.

It also allowed me to prove that I was ambitious and could be trusted with important projects. Even if it was outside the scope of my job or seemed like something I should be compensated more for, I've found that being willing to put in extra work for the sake of the team is something good leaders ultimately reward. I've had some crazy pay jumps even without job hopping because my leaders righted my salary due to some additional responsibilities I ended up keeping. I know that doesn't always work, but I'd argue that if you're not working for leaders who you trust to do that for you, then you should find a better leader.

Where do you live?

Fort Wayne, Indiana