2020 Content Marketing Salary Report

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Hi everyone!

Thanks so much for contributing to this year’s salary survey. I’ll plan to conduct this every year in January for the previous year. You can take a look at last year’s here.

A few things about this data:

  • It’s a small sample size (81 respondents). It’s obviously not comprehensive, but I do think the findings can be a valuable tool for negotiating salaries/raises and setting freelance rates.
  • We have people from all over the world. To standardize the data, I converted all salaries to USD.
  • I added a survey question about gender after I launched this. Only about 75% of the respondents were asked about this. This was a major oversight and will be addressed in all future surveys.
  • I’m not a professional data analyst but have checked and re-checked my math. If you have any questions, please just drop a line in the Slack channel.

Thanks!

Jimmy


$79,657

Average total annual income (full-time and freelance income).

$79,168

The average salary for people who make >50% of their income from a full-time job.

$84,125

The average income for people who make >50% of their income from freelancing.

$88,360

The average income for males (counting both full-time and freelance income).

$76,183

The average income for females (counting both full-time and freelance income).

$12,177

Average pay disparity between men and women. On average, women make 86 cents for every dollar a man makes. This is my least favorite part of this analysis. It's slightly better than the national average of 80%, but still not good enough.

$75,885

Average income for people who work remotely (counting both full-time and freelance income).

$82,005

Average income for people who do NOT work remotely (counting both full-time and freelance income).

83%

Content marketers with a full-time job that also freelance. Income from side hustles varied wildly, but quite a few people are doing quite well by picking up extra freelance work in addition to a full-time job.


Pay increases significantly with experience. This is my favorite finding from this analysis—experience matters and companies are willing to pay for it. It bodes well for content marketing as a career path. This, of course, does not count people who start in content marketing but later transition to product, digital marketing, PR, comms, etc.

Here's the count of respondents by salary range. Obviously, very few are above $100,000/year (which is where we want more people!). Only 18% of respondents had 8 or more years of experience. Of that cohort, nearly all earned more than $80,000/year.

Here is a breakdown of the pool of respondents by their years of experience. Anecdotally, content marketers find their footing after about 5 years of experience. At that point, they are positioned for raises, promotions, junior management roles, etc.—all of which should correlate with a higher income.

Here here the job titles of those making $100,000/year or more:

  • Head of Content
  • Growth Lead
  • Head of Content & Editorial
  • Editorial Director
  • Content Director
  • Director
  • Content Marketing Manager
  • Content Marketing Lead
  • Senior Manager, Content Marketing
  • Director, Content Marketing
  • Managing Editor
  • Head of Marketing
  • Director of Marketing
  • Senior Marketing Manager
  • Product Marketing Manager
  • Content Director
  • CMO and co-founder
  • Content Marketing Manager
  • Senior content marketing manager

Are there other data points you'd like me to analyze? Tweet me or shoot me a message in the Slack channel.

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