Back in the year 2013, I started D’Bayu Souvenirs with no staff, situated right off Jalan Pantai, beside Daya Hotel. The shop was merely a hundred square feet, and there were only a few souvenirs shops around Gaya Street. Despite having a one man show business, the business was doing pretty good, putting up some positive figures every month, until a series of mishaps struck our beloved land of Sabah and Malaysia. I then had to let go of the business in pursue of something else in my career.
At the same year, I founded DearSabah.com with a mission in mind, to promote the tourism of Sabah. (Naive, yeah?) We have world famous diving spots around Sabah like Sipadan Island, Mabul Island, Kapalai, Mataking & etc. just to name a few, and also Mount Kinabalu for the hikers, but in general, Sabah isn’t famous enough to be chosen as THE destination of choice for vacations. Our general crowd was merely hikers or divers alike. Not for the family type of vacations, until the recent boom of Korean tourists and China tourists.
Through Instagram, a photo sharing platform, I can show how beautiful Sabah is, and safe to travel, Sabah would be their destination of choice for vacations/holidays.
There weren’t many instagram accounts back promoting the tourism of Sabah back then, with the likes of @ilovesabah , @sabaheats, @kotakinabalueat, @foodiotkk @kkcity being present at the time. Nowadays you can see a lot of Instagram accounts promoting Sabah food, local businesses and etc.
I wasn’t constantly active in writing journals for DearSabah, but when I do, I usually do micro-blogging on the Instagram instead, which leaves this website lack of new updates. For that, I apologize to the fans of this site. (If there’s any, haha)
Without enough fan base, becoming a part time food blogger isn’t very profitable, to sustain a living, or just sustaining the site, the revenues from the ads are too little or none existence. Therefore, in order to sustain the operation of DearSabah.com, I am starting to look for other source of income to sustain the website, shifting the main focus of being a food blog into a online souvenirs shop instead. Let me know what do you think? Would you recommend your friends to buy souvenirs off our website?
Before I sign off, I would like to thank you all for your support over the years, and stay tuned for more updates! I will still do some writing here and there whenever I have fresh ideas. Thank you! Adios for now!