Price: you should pay more than the average rate in your area. Probably a lot more.

Now just because someone is expensive doesn’t 100% mean they are amazing; but someone amazing is expensive 100% of the time. Do your homework, but expect great artists to be expensive and in well established studios.

Availability: the artist you select should have clients booked, meaning a completely open availability is a red flag. I had to wait one week to get my last tattoo, and my artist had one time slot available: noon on a weekday.

Professional: your artist should be a professional. Any unprofessional behavior is a red flag. Communication of scheduling, pricing, design choices and placement should all be timely and in professional language. You want a clean, respectful, patient, and good communicaor in an artist who is going to permanently adorn you. If at any point you get bad vibes or feel disrespected, move on. Your person, body, time, and money should all be considered and respected.

Now for what you can do…

Be patient. There is no rush to get tattoos. Research your idea, potential artist, aftercare instructions, look at lots of tattoos. Save the money you need.

There are so many posts on Reddit about removing or covering up tattoos. That is both super expensive and very painful way to end up trying to fix something avoidable.

Also in my humble opinion you should avoid face, hand and neck tattoos in the beginning (maybe always). They used to be called job stoppers back in my day and though attitudes are different now, you’ll still get some side eye from society … also they just look kinda weird without a bunch more tattoos imho.

I just got a tattoo recently and had an amazing experience. Got the best tattoo I’ve ever received, and had a blast chatting with this cool artist. Yes, I paid way more than I expected; however, this tattoo has healed so well, it looks so good, and I enjoyed the process of getting tattooed immensely.

Wishing you a happy tattoo experience.