Guest spot pricing
The two ways a host tattoo studio can charge a guest artist — chair rental or commission — plus how the currency is set and how it carries into client bookings during the spot.
The host studio decides how a guest spot is paid for. When the studio sets up its guest terms it picks one pricing model, priced in the studio's single currency, and the artist picks from what's offered when they send their request.
There are two models: chair rental and commission.
Chair rental
The artist pays the studio a flat rate to use the chair, no matter how many clients they book. The studio can set a daily rate, a weekly rate, or both — but if you offer a weekly rate you must also set a daily rate, because leftover days in a stay bill at the daily price.
When requesting, the artist chooses the option that fits their stay:
- Daily rate — the stay is priced as days × daily rate (inclusive calendar days from arrival through departure).
- Weekly rate — the stay is priced as full weeks × weekly rate, plus leftover days × daily rate. Any complete 7-day block counts as one week; days beyond that use the daily rate.
Example: an 8-day stay at €500/week and €80/day → one full week (€500) + one extra day (€80) = €580 — not two full weeks.
Commission
Instead of a flat fee, the studio takes a percentage of each tattoo the artist completes during the stay. The studio can also set an optional cap — the most it will take in commission per 7-day window, counted from the artist's arrival date — which protects a busy artist from an open-ended cut. If no cap is set, the percentage applies with no upper limit.
The cap is counted session by session, in the order the tattoos are completed. Each completed session adds the studio's percentage to a running total for the current window; while the total stays under the cap the studio takes its full percentage, and the moment a session would push it over, the studio takes only the slice that reaches the cap. Once the cap is hit, every later session in that window is 100% the artist's. A stay of a week or less is a single window; a two-week stay is two back-to-back 7-day windows, each with its own fresh cap.
Currency
Each studio has a single currency, set once in its Payment Settings — there's no separate currency picker on the guest pricing screen. That one currency carries through everything: the chair-rental rates, the commission percentage and its cap, and the price clients are quoted when they book the artist during the spot are all in the host studio's currency. So a tattoo artist guesting abroad is quoted and paid in the host studio's currency for that stay — not their usual home currency.
How the artist chooses
The studio's rates show up on its guest spot information, and again inside the request form. The artist taps the option they want — per day, per week, or commission — before sending the request, so both sides agree on the terms up front. For the full request walkthrough, see Requesting a guest spot.
See this in action
- Finding a guest spot on the mapHow a tattoo artist uses the map's Guest Spots filter to find tattoo studios that can host them — searching by date window and minimum days in a row, plus the cut, chair-rental, hours, advertising, and client filters.
- How guest spots workWhat a guest spot is on InkMap — a tattoo artist working out of another tattoo studio for a set stretch of days — how the artist and studio connect, and where a confirmed spot shows up.
- Requesting a guest spotHow a tattoo artist asks to work out of another tattoo studio — finding the studio, sending the request with dates and a pricing option, and what happens once it's in.
- Welcoming guest artistsHow a tattoo studio hosts visiting tattoo artists — turning on Guest Management, setting your terms, and accepting, declining, or resolving overlapping guest requests.
Was this helpful?