Crystal Nicole’s path to content creation began unexpectedly while she was studying civil engineering at the University of New Orleans. She chose this field to appease her mother, who believed Nicole’s original passion for fashion and design wasn’t a “true career.”
Her mother’s influence pushed her toward a more traditional academic path, which, ironically, became the springboard for her career in content creation.
“She said, ‘You have cousins who are engineers; why don’t you look up engineering?’ I also am a math head; I love math. So it wasn’t a terrible idea … And I found the one sector of engineering that felt the most [like] design, and that was civil,” Nicole told AfroTech. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll be designing buildings or highways instead of clothes.’”
Today, she has over a million followers across various social media platforms, leading to collaborations with major beauty and skincare brands, including Olay, Kiehl’s, Youth to the People, Charlotte Tilbury, SheaMoisture, Aveeno, CeraVe, Clinique, NYX Cosmetics, L’Oréal Paris, and Kérastase.
Nicole’s journey into content creation began when she started her natural hair journey while she was still in school, after ten years of getting relaxers every two weeks.
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Her decision sparked numerous questions from others seeking product advice and guidance. Recognizing the lack of representation and resources in the natural hair community, Nicole was inspired to start a YouTube channel.
She wanted to share her personal journey and offer support to others exploring their natural hair options.
She recounted, “I wasn’t even an influencer at that time. I was literally just making videos for fun to help other people. It was never something that I thought would become a career. And I also found so much passion in it because there was so many Black women who didn’t know who they were naturally or how to even take care of what was given to them, including my mom … It was just something that I was doing to provide education for people and to do for fun while I was still in college.”
Nicole began her full-time career as a content creator after securing her first paid YouTube video reel offer.
Although the payment was small, she saw it as a beginning. She started taking content creation seriously after graduating from college in 2018. At that time, she was working as a civil engineer in Austin, Texas, with an annual salary of $70,000.
Eventually, her income from content creation surpassed her civil engineering salary, which she noted was close to $4,000 per month after taxes.
Nicole admitted, “I’m making two, three, four times my engineering salary off of three deals, and I’m straight out of college. So that’s when I was like, ‘Wait, is this trustworthy? Is this something that I can actually make into a career?’ And that’s when I started to measure the consistency and track more regularly my progress to see if it could compare with my job.”
After eighteen months as a civil engineer, Nicole quit her job two months into the pandemic to pursue her passion as a full-time content creator.
Nicole told AfroTech that she prioritizes her integrity and values when choosing brand deals, only agreeing to promote products she genuinely uses or that align with her personal standards.
Her largest brand deal so far has been with Olay. She credits her current success to recognizing her value and partnering with an agency in 2023.
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She stated, “You can’t do these things on your own. I wouldn’t have had that deal if I didn’t have management. Because what you realize is in order to be advocated for properly, you have to first know what you’re worth.”
She added, “And if you’re your own team, you have no idea what your counterparts are charging … When you sign to the right person who believes in you and can advocate for you, that’s when you’re able to see what you’re truly worth because they know. They’re in these fields themselves with your counterparts. So that’s really important.”
In addition to her agency, she has employed two video editors and an assistant.
Crystal Nicole earns the most from TikTok and Instagram, primarily through brand sponsorships for her posts, rather than direct payments from the platforms. YouTube, however, is the platform that provides her with the highest direct earnings.
“The only thing with YouTube is you actually have to build your account to qualify for monetization. Then you have to create videos that are consistently engaging in order to get that money. But once you have that, YouTube pays the most directly,” she remarked.
Nicole stressed that “organization is the name of the game” for aspiring creators. She uses tools like Notion to organize her professional life, which includes setting schedules for recording and editing content, determining when to send invoices, and tracking payments from companies.
Transitioning to full-time content creation forced Nicole to become highly organized, particularly with her finances. She understood the significant responsibility of being self-employed, stating: “I realized the IRS is gonna be coming for this money … I feel like a lot of influencers don’t understand is, when you’re an influencer, when you’re your own entity, you have even more of a responsibility than when you were a nine-to-five. There’s no such thing as you getting a tax return. You’re paying taxes and you’re paying them at 30% typically.”
“If you’re not setting money aside, you’re gonna have money piled up but you’re also gonna have money that is due and you don’t realize how much is due because you’ve never had to pay taxes, you’ve only had taxes returned to you,” she added.
Nicole plans to continue using her platform for educational purposes. Additionally, she has ambitions to create her own skincare product line in partnership with a brand and launch a clothing line designed for tall women.
