Setting Up Your Map Art Business: Name, Register, Bank, Tools

In Module 1 you decided this is for you and got a feel for what the course covers. This module is the boring-but-necessary part — the setup that turns "I want to sell map art" into an actual shop with a name, a bank account, and the few tools that do the work. It's a checklist. Work through it top to bottom and you'll come out the other side ready to make product.

None of this takes long. You can name the shop today, open a bank account this week, and have your tools connected before the weekend. Don't let setup become a place to hide from selling. Do it once, then move on.

One note up front, and I'm not a lawyer: the registration and tax parts below are the general shape of how this works for a small US shop. Rules vary by state, county, and country. Check your area, and for anything you're unsure about, ask a local accountant or your state's small-business office. This is a starting map, not legal advice.

Step 1 — Name your shop

Your shop name is the first thing a buyer reads and the thing they search for when they come back. Get it right once so you're not rebranding at 200 sales.

Three rules make a name work:

• Memorable. Short, easy to say out loud, easy to spell after hearing it once. Two words beats four. "Maple & Meridian" sticks; "Custom City Street Map Art Prints Co" does not.
• Searchable. A name nobody types is a name nobody finds. Names that hint at what you make — maps, streets, cities, home, place — help people find you and help Etsy's search understand you. You don't have to be literal, but don't be a riddle.
• Trademark-safe. This is the one that gets new sellers in real trouble. Never build your name on a team, league, school, or brand. No sports names, no university names, no "vintage" era ranges like decade spans. City and place names are fine and encouraged — "Bayside Maps," "Northgate Print Co," "Cartogram & Co." A shop named after a place you love is safe and evocative. A shop named after someone else's trademark is a takedown waiting to happen.

Before you commit, do three quick checks. Search the name on Etsy — is someone already using it? Search it on Google. And check whether the matching .com or the social handles are open. You want one name that's clear across all of them so buyers never land on the wrong shop.

A small tip: your shop name is also the name you'll tuck into the corner of every map you make (more on that in Step 6), so pick something that looks good small, in a single line, on the edge of a print.

Step 2 — Register the basics

You can sell as yourself from day one. In the US, if you start selling under your own name and don't file anything, you're a sole proprietor by default — that's the simplest possible setup, and plenty of shops run for years that way. Income flows onto your personal tax return. There's almost nothing to file to start.

The next step up is an LLC. It's still simple, but it separates your business from you personally — which mostly matters for liability protection and looking official. It costs a filing fee (varies a lot by state — anywhere from around $50 to a few hundred) and a little paperwork.

For most people starting a map art shop, here's the honest answer:

• Start as a sole proprietor if you just want to test whether this sells. No fee, no filing, sell this week.
• Form an LLC once you're making steady sales, want the liability separation, or want the business to feel like a real thing with its own name.

You can start as a sole prop and form an LLC later. That's a common, sensible path. If you want to trade under a shop name that isn't your legal name, you may also need a "DBA" ("doing business as") filing — a cheap local registration. Again: check your area, and if the money's getting real, an hour with an accountant pays for itself.

Step 3 — Open a business bank account

Do this even as a sole proprietor. Keep business money out of your personal account. It's the single best habit for a new shop.

Why it's worth the twenty minutes:

• Bookkeeping gets easy. Every deposit is a sale, every withdrawal is an expense. No untangling your grocery runs from your print costs at tax time.
• Taxes get honest. One account is your whole financial story. You'll thank yourself in the spring.
• It feels like a business, which changes how you treat it.

A basic free business checking account is all you need to start. If you form an LLC, open the account in the business's name. If you're a sole prop, a separate personal account used only for the shop is a fine stand-in early on.

Step 4 — Set up simple bookkeeping

You don't need software for this on day one. You need a habit and a place to put numbers.

Track three things:

• What came in — every sale, gross.
• What went out — your tools (see Step 5), any print or shipping costs, materials, fees.
• What's left — the difference, which is your actual profit.

A single spreadsheet with columns for date, description, money in, and money out covers a shop's first hundred sales. Update it weekly — Sunday coffee, ten minutes. When you outgrow the spreadsheet, a low-cost bookkeeping tool takes over, but don't buy it before you need it.

Keep your receipts. Your MapMarked plan, your Etsy fees, your print costs — these are business expenses that reduce what you owe. A shoebox or a folder in your email is fine. Just keep them.

We do the full money side — what things cost, what to charge, and where your margin actually comes from — in Pricing & Margins.

Step 5 — Sales tax, lightly

Here's the short, honest version, and once more: not legal advice, check your state.

When you sell to customers, you may owe sales tax where your buyers are. The good news for beginners: if you sell on a marketplace like Etsy, the marketplace usually collects and remits sales tax to states on your behalf — it's handled for you on those sales. That covers a lot of new sellers automatically.

Where you need to pay attention:

• Your own website or in-person sales (a market table, a wholesale order) may put the responsibility back on you.
• Your home state may want you to register for a sales tax permit once you're selling regularly, even through a marketplace.

The move for a beginner: start selling on Etsy where the tax is largely handled, keep clean records from Step 4, and check your state's small-business or revenue website for what a shop your size needs to register. When your own-site or in-person sales pick up, that's the moment to sort out a sales tax permit — not before.

Step 6 — The tools you actually need

Four things. That's the whole starter kit. Resist adding more until you've made a sale.

1. A way to make the product — a MapMarked seller plan. This is your studio. You pick any address on earth, choose from thousands of color palettes (or build your own colors), and download a print-ready 300 DPI file with your shop name in the corner. It replaces a designer, Illustrator, and hours of work with a few minutes.

The important part for you as a seller is licensing. Selling map art requires a commercial license, and that comes with a seller plan — Creator ($19/mo, 10 maps) or Studio ($49/mo, 50 maps). The $6.99 single-map price (or $9.99 for a custom-color map) is a personal-use license — for making one map for your own wall, not for resale. On a plan, your real cost per map works out to roughly a dollar or two. Start on Creator; move to Studio when you're making more than ten designs a month or want your own brand fully replacing ours on everything. See the plans at /sell.

2. A shop — Etsy or Shopify. This is where buyers find you and pay you. Etsy is the easiest start: built-in traffic, buyers already searching for map art, and sales tax largely handled. Shopify is your own store — more control, more work, no built-in audience. Start on Etsy. We walk through listings, tags, and search in Selling on Etsy.

3. A way to get paid. On Etsy this is built in — Etsy Payments handles cards and deposits to your bank account. On Shopify you'll turn on a payment processor. Either way, the money lands in the business account you opened in Step 3.

4. Canva — optional. Handy for simple shop banners, social graphics, or a tidy logo. Nice to have, not required to sell. Skip it until you want it.

That's the kit. A seller plan to make the art, a shop to sell it, a way to get paid, and maybe Canva. Everything else is a distraction until you've proven people buy.

Step 7 — Set up your MapMarked account and your corner branding

Last setup step, and the one that makes every future map carry your shop.

Set up your seller account and open the Seller Studio — the guided build → mockup → copy → package flow made for members. The piece to configure now is your corner label: the small line of branding that prints in the corner of your maps. Set it to your shop name from Step 1 and every map you make from here on carries it automatically. It reads as your shop, not a generic file. On the Studio plan you can go a step further and white-label — your brand replaces ours entirely, so a print carries your name end to end. (One small line always stays, by license: the OpenStreetMap credit. It's an attribution requirement, not a watermark, and it doesn't read as anyone else's brand.)

Configure the label once. From now on, it's baked into the work — which is exactly how it should be.

Your setup checklist

Run this list. When every box is checked, you're done with setup for good:

• Shop name chosen — memorable, searchable, trademark-safe, and free on Etsy / Google / the handles.
• Business registered as far as you need — sole prop to start, LLC when it's worth it (checked your area).
• Business bank account open.
• Bookkeeping spreadsheet started, receipts saved.
• Sales tax basics understood for your state (Etsy handles most of it early).
• MapMarked seller plan chosen — Creator or Studio.
• Etsy (or Shopify) shop created, payments turned on.
• Corner label set to your shop name in Seller Studio.

That's a real business, set up properly, in a handful of short steps. Next we figure out who you're making all this for — because the buyer decides the map. Head to Who Buys Map Art to meet them.

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Ready to make product? A seller plan includes the commercial license to sell your maps, plus the corner-label branding to make them yours. See the seller plans →

In this course: ← Previous — Start a Map Art Business in 2026 · Next — Who Buys Map Art →