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people making over $100k in salary in PPC, what does your work life balance look like when you get to that level?
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Hours are normal but stress level is shit.
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I work for a large billion dollar public company but in a smaller division for a lead gen company that was acquired. I’ve been here for 6+ years and have about that much experience. My job title is Director, Performance Marketing and run a small team of more junior analysts but also indirectly manage some engineers and front end developers. I’m 31 and my salary is ~$150k US including bonuses. I have an MBA and an MS in Marketing Analytics. I’d say my work/life balance is great, I work remote full time but there’s an office of coworkers I could travel to. There was a point where my daily calendar was cluttered with meetings but I’ve been able to get that down to what’s only necessary. Some days I might work 1-2 hours just to check on campaign performance but some days I can have my head down for 8+ hours. Overall I’m very happy. Hopefully that helps anyone interested.
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I’m probably oversharing, but here we go…
I’ve been in marketing for nearly 18 years and started freelancing in early 2019 after quitting my full-time job due to stress and working way too many hours. There’s zero chance any company would be willing to pay me a salary close to what I earn today, unless it was maybe a CMO role.**In-house roles** (not every job I’ve had)
* Marketing Manager: $40k (40 hours/week)
* Search Marketing Manager: $86k + $15k annual bonus (50+ hours/week)
* Account Manager: $120k + $20k annual bonus + valuable stock (45-50 hours/week)
* VP of Marketing: $175k + worthless stock options (45-50 hours/week)
* Dir of Marketing: $193k + worthless stock options (60-70 hours/week)**Freelance**: When I started, my goal was to make at least $150k/year if it meant I worked fewer hours and was less stressed out. Most of what I do is Google/Meta Ads strategy and management.
I’ve changed my business model and pricing a lot. Early on, I mostly did hourly engagements and my rates were WAY lower than they are now. In year 3, I switched to monthly retainers and project fees (PPC audits) with minimum retainer amounts. I’ve also started working half day Fridays or taking the whole day off. I don’t take Fri meetings unless 100% necessary.
* Year 1 (Apr-Dec): $87,776 (20 hours/week. Lots of vacations plus trying to find clients)
* Year 2: $201,669 (25-30 hours/week + three 3-week vacations)
* Year 3: $460,186 (30-35 hours/week)
* Year 4: $357,762 (30-35 hours/week. Revenue dropped YoY because I took a month off to move cross country + had some big Nov/Dec invoices not get paid until Jan 2023)
* Year 5 (YTD): $446,285 (25 hours/week) -
Why’s this shit on my front page
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I am at the point where I work one day a week and make about 125k. To get to this point, however, was extremely difficult and my work life balance was not good for several years. During those years, I was making well over 200k but it was an unhealthy amount of work and stress. Although it was necessary and worth it to get to where I am now.
I consult primarily for Private Equity firms and it comes with extreme expectations and little room to fail. After several large successes that led to very profitable exits, I was able to leverage this into a higher hourly rate and reduce my workload.
Not included in the income I stated above is the equity I’ve also built into all of my projects as part of the sales bonus pool once the portfolio company is sold. This amounts to anywhere from 50k to 250k per company depending on the acquisition price. I have three of these deals in place still that will payout within the next 3 years.
I’ll likely fill my schedule back up within a year, but I needed a mental break. It is an awesome situation right now though.
Happy to provide more details of my actual career path if you are interested.
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Hi guys, this is a very interesting topic. Can you please state what country are you from and if you work for client from abroad? I think salaries can highly differ based on location.
For example im in bussines for more than 10 years. Live and work in Europe – Czech Republic. Ive been employed for a year, then 7 years freelancing and 5 years running an agency.
As a senior employee you can expect bewteen 35-50k usd per year here.
As a highly skilled freelancer you can get 80-100k if you are charing agency fee. I also had the most freedom when i freelanced, but its not for everyone. Most freelancer dobt get paid this much here.
Now im running realatively small agency (less than 10people) which is making 200k+, but there is lots work managing people and its basically 9-5 everyday.
Personally I would like to have some more free time and im looking for ways how to do that. Even if it would meant lower profits.
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$90k salary at an agency and ~$40k freelancing on the side. i started freelancing after 1.5 years as an analyst, and have several consistent clients from that. i’ve always been agency-side and early on in my career, i frequently had 40+ hour weeks. now i average around 25 hours a week.
my work/life balance has definitely improved. my salaried role is great. i only have 1 weekly meeting with my internal team and an average of 2 client meetings each month. a busier month for me is 4+ client meetings.
my freelance clients are also very low key. they’re all aware that i have a full-time job so they don’t place demands on my time. i do keep a pulse on their accounts while on vacation, but i do have someone that they can contact in case of emergencies.
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The scope of my role has evolved over the years within one company, from product, to digital advertising, to running growth marketing (including many marketing channels, performance and brand, as well as data and analytics) across several large brands. My base is just above $500K/yr, along with a sizable yearly bonus, and equity. As the leader of this group, I work with my managers on their own roadmaps, make sure campaigns are organized across channels, help other groups within the company understand what we do, drive important product initiatives, and more.
I’d say my work life balance is actually pretty good, I break up my day a lot between meeting (on days I work remotely), and probably come in around 45-50/hrs a week. As my team grows, my workload also has been creeping up on me, but I have great managers to delegate to, so it hasn’t been catastrophic. Personally I can do 60hr weeks here and there, but not in perpetuity.
I think my success is partly due to hard work, being relatively smart, and having a good mindset for the work, but also I was very lucky in selecting a company that thinks very long-term and takes good care of its employees in an industry that’s growing rapidly. I think it’s more important than people realize to work on finding the right company to work for and getting an in there, vs. finding the exact role you want to do.
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