Tattoo artist Kevin L. says that what a tattoo artist earns depends a lot
on where he or she lives.
"Depending on your geographic location, you could make $40,000 a year on
up," he says. "Here in Florida tattooing is cheaper than if you go to New
York. One hundred fifty dollars (for a tattoo) in Florida might be $250 or
$350 in New York. On average, a guy in Florida might make $40,000 while he
would make $80,000 in New York."
"Salary is dependent on your will and desirability," says Pat Sinatra.
"You can make $1,000 a week, and you can make less. People will get confused
and see that [tattooists] charge $150 an hour [but] if you're lucky you do
three to five hours a day, and that's a lot."
There's no shortage of tattoo artists out there, says Sinatra. So breaking
into the field isn't easy.
"With the glut of tattooers in the marketplace now, the pie has certainly
been cut into smaller slices," she says. "It's supply and demand at this point,
and I really do see that the market is flooded."
It used to be that tattooing equipment was extremely difficult to find.
It took Sinatra three years to find all the equipment she needed when she
became a tattoo artist.
"The attainability of equipment is so much easier than it was 30 years
ago," she says, and that's a big reason there are so many more tattoo artists
today. Tattoo artists are paid like hairdressers, in that their earnings normally
depend on how many customers they serve. Generally, they either pay a flat
monthly rate to work out of the shop and keep whatever they earn above that
amount, or they share their earnings with the shop at the end of each day.
Each shop has its own policy.
Whether you'll find a job in this field depends a lot on timing. The popularity
of tattoos waxes and wanes. "It's just like a style or fashion -- it comes
and goes," says Kevin L. "Right now the economy is hurting everybody. In the
early 90s when I started, it was booming."
Eric Gaudet has been the manager of a tattoo and piercing studio for the
past seven years. In that time he hasn't seen a big change in demand for tattoos.
"It's been pretty steady for the last few years," he says. "I think if anything
it's getting more accepted. It's becoming more common than not."
Earnings and employment information from the U.S. Department of Labor is
not available for this field at this time.