Why A tattoo Artist Needs a Website in 2026
I think social media is about to change again, and it will affect the way we build our careers. I also don’t think tattooists are ready for it.
A while ago, I talked about the idea of building your portfolio and creating a home for your work on rented land. And by rented land, I mean social media.
Now, I know I bang on about this quite a bit, but hear me out for a second because I don’t think most tattooists see what I see coming. Not because you’re daft or anything, I’m just more of a nerd than you are.
When I started tattooing, social media was all about MySpace. Then Facebook, then Instagram, now TikTok.
Every time the herd moved, tattooists moved with them. Starting over from zero followers, building another audience, learning what the platform wanted and what worked.
During all of these shifts, two things remained true. An artist’s website remained the place you could control and present yourself properly, and email remained one of the best ways to build a genuinely engaged audience.
Those two things remain true today. Fact.
What I believe is about to happen is that the rise of AI slop, deepfakes and propaganda on these platforms will destroy the public’s trust in social media. Possibly for ever. YouTube and Spotify are already taking steps to remove AI slop and mark AI-generated content as AI-generated.
This tells me that, should this ‘AI slop social media apocalypse’ actually happen, people will inevitably return to what they trusted before. Search, email and websites.
That, and the constant need to follow the herd, is why I think there’s a fundamental problem with making social media the only place your professional life exists. I’m not talking about having a website because you’re supposed to have one. I think we should all be re-evaluating our websites and treating them differently.
Because I don’t think your tattoo artist website should just be a portfolio with your contact details underneath it.
Your website should become your workshop.
And just like a real workshop, it should be a place where your work lives, but also where your ideas, your history, your projects and everything else that makes up your professional life can accumulate over time. All in one place.
And the good thing is, you don’t need to build all of that on day one.
Start small, own the space, then let it grow.
Building a website doesn’t have to be difficult. There are plenty of services now that give you pretty much everything you need in one place. Squarespace is one example, but there are plenty of others.
And for most tattooists, you don’t need anything particularly complicated to start with. You need somewhere to show your work, an About page so people can find out who you are and what you do, and a way for people to contact you.
That’s basically it. You can build just that and have a perfectly useful website without knowing anything about web development.
Sadly, that’s where most tattooist sites begin and end. But yours doesn’t have to. It can, and should, grow with you.
As your career develops, you can start adding things to it. Maybe you have a page about the conventions you attend. Perhaps you could document your travels. Or have a page explaining your process and what somebody can expect when they book a tattoo with you. Maybe a page for the sponsors or companies you work with. Maybe you start writing. Maybe you start building an archive of your older work.
None of that needs to happen immediately. That’s actually the point.
You’re not building a finished tattoo artist website. You’re building a place that can grow with your career.
A permanent home
Now, before you skip this, hang on. I know what you’re thinking.
“Okay, but what does having all this on my own tattoo artist website actually give me that Instagram doesn’t, Paul?” Well…
It gives you somewhere that belongs to you.
When somebody searches for you, you want there to be somewhere that represents you properly. Not just your latest six posts on Instagram, and not whatever the algorithm happens to decide people should see. Not a profile that looks completely different because the platform has changed the way it works again.
Your website becomes the place that all of that points back to. It’s your home on the web. And the longer you have it, the more useful it can become.
Every piece of work you add, every project you document, every article you write, every convention you attend and every bit of history you record is adding to this thing.
You’re not just trying to get somebody to book a tattoo today.
You’re building a record of your career that somebody can discover five, ten or twenty years from now. An archive and a welcome mat.
And I think that’s a very different way of thinking about having a website. For tattooists at least.
SE what now?
Your website isn’t just somewhere for people to look at your work. It can also help people find you, whether they’re looking for you or the kind of tattooing you do.
You don’t need to become an SEO expert to make your website useful these days. Recent changes in search, and the presence of AI, have actually made genuinely useful, relevant content more important than gaming the system with hashtags and keywords.
But more on that in another episode.
For now, all you need to understand is that if your website clearly tells Google who you are, what you do, where you work and how people can contact you, you’re giving it the information it needs to connect you with those searches.
And that becomes particularly useful when you combine your website with something like a Google Business Profile, a YouTube channel and your various social media pages. Your website isn’t just somewhere you’re sending people instead of socials. It’s part of the information that helps people find you in the first place.
If your studio address is clearly listed on your website and your business profile, clients searching can be given your location, your website, your contact details and directions.
I think we tend to think about a website as something we build, finish and then forget about. You put your portfolio on it, your contact details, maybe a little bit about yourself, and then leave it gathering dust until the internet dies.
But what I’m suggesting is that your website should be somewhere your career could actually accumulate and grow. A place where true fans of your work could really delve into what you do.
Think about the projects you’ve worked on, places you’ve travelled to, conventions you’ve attended, people you’ve worked with, things you’ve learned and ideas you’ve developed.
Most of that stuff probably disappears into the feed or never gets posted in the first place. If it does get posted, it’s seen for a few days and then buried under everything else.
Your website gives you somewhere to keep it. Somewhere you can curate key moments in your career and preserve them for the people who’ll actually go to the trouble of searching them out. And I think there’s something really valuable in that. Because you’re not just building a website. You’re building an archive of your career.
A portfolio is really about showing people what you’ve made. And that’s useful. Obviously it is. But that’s closer to a gallery.
A workshop, on the other hand, is about more than just the finished things. It’s where you work. It’s where you experiment. It’s where you keep your tools. It’s where things get made, and where the evidence of all that work starts to accumulate.
I love being able to see the behind-the-scenes stuff from my favourite artists. Like most art fans, I don’t just want to see the work, I’m trying to understand where it comes from. And I think your website can do the same thing for your career.
It can show the finished tattoos, obviously. But it could also show the projects you’re working on, the things you’re interested in, the things you gave up on, the places you’ve been, the people you’ve worked with and the things you’ve learned along the way.
It becomes a much more complete picture of who you are as a tattooist. And that’s exactly what today’s hyper-focused, all-access world has come to expect.
When I was growing up, being a fan of somebody meant having very limited access to them. A few photographs, maybe a clip on television, and if you were lucky, an interview in the music press. I knew almost nothing about most of my heroes.
Today, if you’re a fan of somebody or their work, you can follow the whole journey. Now, that level of access hasn’t sat well with me on social media because I’ve always felt forced to do it. But I feel completely different about it on my website.
Because I’m in control? Possibly.
Because my website doesn’t need to feed that algorithm, control returns to you. Personally, that’s the only place I think it should be. And I think that difference is also really important. Not just to us artists but to our audience. Our clients.
The workshop can begin as a very small room.
The thing I really don’t want you to take away from this is that you now need to go away and build some massive website.
You don’t.
In fact, I think that’s probably the quickest way to never build one at all. Start with the basics.
Register your domain, that’s the thing that ends in .com or .net etc. You can use your Instagram handle, your name or an interesting phrase if you prefer.
I can create some tutorials about this and website building if you’re interested, just let me know in the comments. But honestly, it’s pretty simple. Just Google “register a domain name” and you’re away. Services like Squarespace and Shopify allow you to do all of this when you register if you’re not very tech-savvy.
I chose thisisourstodestroy.com because it has a backstory that relates to me and it looks good on my business card. It’s really no deeper than that.
Put your work somewhere people can actually see it. Tell them who you are, where you work and how people can contact you.
That’s enough to start with.
Then, as things happen in your career, put them on the website. You go to a convention? Put it there. You travel somewhere to tattoo? Put it in there. You work on an interesting project? Document it. You learn something that you think is worth sharing? Write about it.
Hell, if you love poetry, put that there too. You’d be surprised at how many people will enjoy it.
The main point is, you don’t have to build the whole workshop before you start using it.
You just need somewhere to put the first piece of work and a place to build over time.
Don’t abandon social media.
Use it. Let it do what it’s good at.
Use it to show people what you’re doing, right now. To connect with people, to find new clients and to put your work in front of an audience.
But don’t make it the primary place your professional life exists.
Build that somewhere else. Somewhere you own and can control. Somewhere you can keep adding to.
Somewhere that can still represent you when the latest social media platform has changed its algorithm, redesigned its interface or disappeared completely.
Because your career is going to be around a lot longer than any particular social media platform.
Your tattoo artist website shouldn’t be the sign above the door. It should be the workshop behind it.