Founders Interview: Goran Duskic, Best.Tattoo

Why did you decide to use logo.com for logo creation?

As a website investor, I purchased best.tattoo premium domain and transferred all the content from an older "tattoo website" with a long, not so powerful .com domain. As we started the rebranding process I was considering my options for a new logo. Usual ideas came to mind, but then I remembered logo.com and decided to give it a try.

At first, it was fun, but after testing some of their suggestions I realized this could actually work! Within less than 15 minutes I had a beautiful logo, with a favicon and color palette. For a price of 1 restaurant meal, it was more than worth it! I will use logo.com again in the future for one of my next projects!

Compared to marketplaces where designers give several options you have an interview process (takes time), and it’s a lot more expensive (cost). Even with that, you are not 100% sure that the logo that you received is not a ripoff copy of someone else's logo! The one I got may not win awards, but with logo.com you know what you get, and you get it fast for an affordable price!

For a small project like best.tattoo this is a perfect solution! And since I have many projects, I will definitely use it again!

How long have you been working on best.tattoo?

I registered the domain name a year ago. It is a premium name, and it cost a bit more, but the potential is there and it is worth every penny! From an SEO standpoint, the tattoo industry is very competitive with keywords such as “best tattoo shops” (200,000 daily searches), “best tattoo designs” (1,000 daily searches) and “best tattoo artists” (3,000 daily searches).

What I like most are the available URL combinations! Best.tattoo/for-men, best.tattoo/removal, best.tattoo/artists, and many more! This also has a positive impact on monetization models! To answer your question, it is a new project I am working on, but I am very excited. I hope to make a nice profit at the end of the day with this new name, and a new logo design.

Starting this project with a blank domain name, no matter how great the domain name is, it is still very hard! So, when I saw a website about tattoos for sale, I decided to buy it and combine the two. Even though it’s a new project for me, since I combined it with an old website, I am already making returns on investment.

‍What other projects are you involved in?

The project that takes most of my time is WhoAPI and Webmaster.Ninja. It may seem like two separate projects but if you look under the hood, they are the two pieces of the same company. We’ve built Webmaster.ninja with APIs from WhoAPI, so it essentially serves as an example of how powerful our APIs are! And if you look at Webmaster.ninja competitors, you will see they also have APIs! The only difference is that their APIs are under the same name, and the tool came before the API.

We could have built a handful of tools with WhoAPI’s APIs, but we decided on Webmaster.ninja because we wanted to change the website monitoring game. Webmaster.Ninja is a completely free service with a revolutionary business model. We literally make money when you use the service we recommend you, when you experience an issue with your website.

For example, your SSL is about to expire. We notify you (free of charge), and if you decide to renew the SSL with the provider we recommend, that’s when we make money! The packages you see on the website will only remove those ads / recommendation.

If I have some time left in my day, I invest in small websites. I buy them, redesign them and they generate passive income for my company. Depending on the trend, I may sell them for a profit.

‍What are the top 3 things to look for when doing rebranding?

So far I’ve made several redesigns, rebrands and major changes for my projects and here are the 3 things to look for.

1. Google indexing

The URL structure of the website needs to remain the same. If the old website depends heavily on Google traffic, you definitely want to keep it that way. Don’t assume “Google will figure out the change” and leave it at that. Create redirects from old pages, and while you are at it, switch to HTTPS! Do it because switching from HTTP to HTTPS is like a small “rebranding” in the eyes of Google.

2. Your client should feel the improvement

How many times have you seen a huge corporation rebrand, but you get more of the same? I will use the analogy of redesigning your website. When you are redesigning your website, you want to make it faster, more secure, more up-to-date, better content, more responsive! The same should follow with your company getting a new name, a new logo, a new company! It should be a level up! Otherwise, why bother and waste time and money?

3. Great name

If you are going to rebrand, this decision needs to come out of some sort of conclusion! In the end, it usually comes down to a new and improved name. This name better reflects the service that you do, after years of doing business you can afford this better name (and accompanying domain name).

‍Can you think of good advice for first-time entrepreneurs?

The best advice I can give is to buy something that already works and then build on top of that. We’ve all been sold this “revolutionary dream” of changing the world and building the next Apple, Facebook, Google. In reality, most of us will break down in pieces and give up with tails between our legs.

That’s not me being pessimistic, that’s the statistician in me speaking. Some startup founders dedicate their entire lives to build their company, while investors only part with a small amount of their gambling money. All for that dream of building something meaningful.

But it doesn’t have to be like that! You can buy a small business, or a small website and use that as your testing ground to see what this game of entrepreneurship is all about! Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, find what already works and make it better! Or at the very least, make it different with your personal stamp!

‍How much time do you spend working on yourself

At first, I was a hard worker, but I didn't work on myself. I spent more than 12 hours in my office, and weekends were not reserved for R&R. I suppose that’s what your 20’s are for. To work hard, and learn stuff the hard way. I started as a young entrepreneur because I dropped out of school. I used that failure as my main burning fuel for more than a decade! I had to prove to everyone, including me, that I was better than a piece of paper showing I graduated.

Later this turned into an obsession for knowledge. I used to say, I never finished school, so to this day, I still have to learn very hard! At one point I was reading all books written by Tony Robbins, and in one of them, he mentioned his mentor Jim Rohn. Then I watched several lectures and read several books by Jim Rohn. I just followed the rabbit hole.

An insightful quote from Jim Rohn says: “Work more on yourself than you do on your job”. Now, I understand I still have a long way to go, but as someone who 10x-ed his income, the more I think about it... the logic behind this quote has everything to do with my success! All the best ideas I had for my business, came from learning or working on myself. Timothy Ferriss 4-hour workweek got me to set up a landing page for WhoAPI before we had the software developed. Later we raised $250,000 from various investors to grow our company.

Spencer Haws’ podcast got me to try again with website investing (this time being smart about it) and making thousands of dollars in passive income! Dave Ramsey’s book Total Money Makeover got me to create a budget and pay off my entire personal debt! On and on, working on yourself will change your life.

‍Any particular books you can recommend? What's the last one you read?

I would love to do that! Books changed my life, and I created a list of books that everyone should read! I can’t recommend one book, and usually, this one book I recommend will lead to you reading at least one more similar book. Who knows, maybe all this reading will motivate you to even write a book or an e-book like I did!

Right now, I am reading The Food Pharmacy: Dramatic New Evidence That Food is Your Best Medicine - By Jean Carper. After reading a lot of books on marketing, sales, investing, personal development I decided to read a few books on health. What can I say? After this book, I became a huge fan of garlic, hahaha. That’s how it goes with books, you never know where you will end up, but I promise you it will be in a better place!

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