Salary
Average Salary: $22,000
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $918,456
The average salary for a manicurist is about $22,000 a year (source). That's not a lot of money. At all. It's right around minimum wage, hovering maybe a shade or two above it.
However, the good news is that once you have shelled out the money to go to beauty school and have a license, you can work pretty much anywhere.
That means if you want to open up your own shop and set the prices, you can do that. It will be expensive—you'll need to spend money on a business license and obviously all the overhead of a shop, insurance, marketing, etc.—but you'll own your business.
Another route you can go is to work at a popular hair salon as a nail technician and build a loyal clientele. You'll probably get minimum wage, but you'll also get tips—and more importantly, people will see your work and hear about you. You will gain a great deal of experience and you'll make connections.
Those connections can lead to opportunities to do work for fashion magazines, music videos, or film shoots. Eventually, you may even gain enough popularity to snag an agent who will get you consistent work, helping you make a lot more than minimum wage. You can make $1,000 a day working for an ad campaign (source).
Celebrity nail artists can make up to $100,000 a year. Talk about living the dream (source).