For Tattoo Shops: Run Your Business on Tattoo Art Customs

Storefront, bookings, tap-to-pay, design sales, and referrals — what a shop membership actually includes, in plain language.

Tattoo Art Customs started as a design marketplace, but shops kept asking for the other half of the job: the business tools. A shop membership turns your listing into a working storefront on the marketplace — clients find you, book you, pay you in person by tapping a phone, and buy designs you sell — while the back office handles the unglamorous parts: client records, inventory, expenses, and review requests. This page explains each piece honestly, including what it costs, so you can decide whether it fits your shop. If you already know it does, see the membership plans; shops subscribe on an annual plan.

Your verified storefront

Every shop member gets a public storefront page on the marketplace: your artists, your portfolio, your location and hours, and your booking options, presented next to the design gallery clients are already browsing. Verified shops are also the one exception to the site's contact rules — members generally cannot post off-site contact details anywhere on Tattoo Art Customs, but verified, subscribed shops may publish their business location, appointment requirements, and business hours, because a tattoo shop clients cannot find is not a listing at all. Your artists' portfolios live here too, and pieces they draw can be sold as premade designs in the gallery, where design artists earn a 60% commission on every sale of their work.

Bookings and client profiles

Shop members run their appointment book through the site: booking requests, scheduled sessions, and touch-up appointments are tracked in one place instead of scattered across DMs and text threads. Client profiles keep the history that good shops run on — what was tattooed, when, with what notes — and the review-request tools let you ask satisfied clients for a review at the right moment, while the experience is fresh, instead of hoping they remember. For multi-artist shops, the toolkit extends to per-artist commissions, so splits are recorded as the work happens rather than reconstructed at the end of the month.

Tap-to-pay, with no card reader

In-person payment is the part shops feel daily, so we built it to need nothing but a phone. With tap-to-pay, clients pay in the shop by tapping against your phone through PayPal — no reader to buy, no separate terminal contract, and no monthly fee until you sell. The split is stated up front: a fair 1% to Tattoo Art Customs on tap-to-pay volume. Deposits for appointments and balances at the chair stop being an awkward cash conversation, and every payment lands in your records automatically, next to the booking it belongs to.

Referral earnings and design sales

Shops earn two ways beyond the chair. First, referrals: when a verified sale traces back to your shop's referral, the shop earns 20% — clients who find a design through you and buy it put money in the shop's account, not just the artist's. Second, designs: flash sheets and premade artwork your artists upload sell in the gallery around the clock, including the Saturday sale, which runs every week from Saturday evening to Sunday morning Central. A design drawn once in a slow afternoon can sell while the shop is closed. Shops can also sell physical merch designs through the same account, and run their storefront as the one link they hand to clients for everything — book, buy, pay.

The back office

The toolkit includes the boring systems nobody brags about and every shop needs: inventory tracking for ink, needles, and supplies; expense records alongside your income, so tax season is a report instead of a shoebox; and dashboards that show designers and shop staff exactly what they have earned and what is pending. Payouts require a registered account, an active paid subscription, and a configured payout method — set it up once, at signup, and proceeds flow instead of piling up.

What it costs, and how to join

A tattoo shop membership is a single annual subscription — the current price is shown on the membership page and in our terms — plus the 1% tap-to-pay split described above. There is no separate per-seat pricing in the plan: it is built for working shops, not enterprise software. To join, create an account, choose the shop plan, and set up your storefront; if you want advertising placement beyond the storefront — featured spots and promotions reaching the marketplace audience — see the advertising page as well. Questions before you commit are welcome on the contact page: pick the shop topic and a human reads it.

And if you are an artist rather than a shop — drawing designs, taking custom commissions, or both — the designer guide covers upload specs, style rules, and how the 60% commission works, and the custom design guide shows the client side of the process you would be fulfilling.