Daniel Wong · Kota Kinabalu, Sabah
Building slow. Writing it all down.
I run a small web agency and a handful of my own businesses from Kota Kinabalu, with AI doing most of the boring parts. This site is my public journal: what I build each week, what breaks, what I learn, and the family in between.
Need a website? That's my agency, Bingo Web Design — 200+ businesses served.
This week
Every Sunday: what got built, what broke, what I'm doing next. Pictures first, few words.
Week 41 — Four reels in a morning, and a site that was down for two weeks
Four launch reels from one free tool, three new website projects agreed, and a client site that was down for two weeks before anyone noticed.
Read this week →
More writing
Monthly life recaps, build notes, and the occasional story about my kids.
September 2026 — Life Recap
A health screening I didn't enjoy, a month of chasing sleep, a burnt pot brought back to life, a pool day with the kids, and new speakers in an old truck. Notes from September in Kota Kinabalu.
Week 40 — A government site went live, and a funeral order that never arrived
A state agency site went live, every client site now watched every 5 minutes, and the shop bug that quietly refused funeral orders after 4pm.
Week 39 — A free audit tool went live, and a care plan we never set up
A client was billed a full year for website care. This week I found out it had never been switched on.
Week 38 — 8 WhatsApp taps in 15 months. Then 80 in one.
A dental group's old website got 8 WhatsApp taps in 15 months. The new one got 80 in August alone. Here's what changed, plus a KK nightlife guide and a hacked site cleaned up.
Week 37 — I counted what one 5-minute setting cost my florist
A 5-minute checkout timer had cancelled 39 florist orders since June. This week I counted them. Plus wishing cards that had vanished from 15 products, and SabahGuide's first Facebook group posts.
Week 36 — A contact form that never sent us a single copy
A client's contact form was meant to copy us on every enquiry. For a year it sent none. Plus 16 lost pages back on a dental clinic's site and my first LinkedIn post.
Building Slow
The long reads: what I build, what breaks, and the real numbers behind running a small agency on AI. On Substack.
I stopped selling WordPress sites. Here's what I build instead.
A five-day outage, an AI that can't click, and the honest trade-off for my clients.
I replaced my freelancers with AI. Here are the 4 files that made it work.
Eleven months, real costs, real mistakes.. and the one job AI still can't do.
Stop hunting for the perfect prompt. Start a mistake log.
I've logged 1,685 AI lessons since April. Here's how a plain text file turns them into rules.
What I run
Seven businesses across four industries. Swipe to see them all, tap one to visit.
Agency
BINGO Web Design
Web design, SEO and Google Ads for businesses across Malaysia.
SaaS
GoReview
Automated Google review collection for local businesses.
E-Commerce
Happy Florist
E-commerce flower brand. Fresh arrangements, same-day delivery in KK.
Media
SabahGuide
Travel content hub for Sabah. Past 1,000 pages.
Media
Bagasi
Hotel & travel discovery platform for Malaysia.
SaaS
HelloReply
AI receptionist that answers customer messages for small businesses.
E-Commerce
KK Florist
Second florist brand serving Kota Kinabalu.
About Me
So, Who Am I?
Hey, I'm Daniel.
Building websites for Sabah businesses since 2010
Brisbane, and a list of food
It started with a blog post. While I was doing my Master's in Brisbane I wrote "43 Foods You Must Eat at Kota Kinabalu" and it went viral. People kept messaging me for travel recommendations, so I passed them to a local travel agent who paid me a commission at the end of the month.
I'd rather build the thing that sends the leads
That was the click... I did not have to answer the questions, I could build the thing that sends the leads. So I did. Car rentals, hotel bookings, tours, a stack of travel websites built to generate leads for the industry, back before Grab and Agoda owned the space. Same idea I have been running ever since.
Where my SEO actually came from
I built a lot of those websites, and I had to get every one of them ranking on Google, because a site nobody finds sends no leads. That is where my SEO skills came from... not a course, years of ranking my own sites. Those sites became assets that brought in leads on their own for many years, and I sold those leads for income. I even opened a travel agency, just because the leads were already coming in. Later I sold some of these websites to local agencies for five figures, so I could focus on other business opportunities.
What that looks like now
Today that is BINGO Web Design, two media sites, two SaaS products, and two e-commerce brands, one of them run with my wife. I build most of it myself, automate whatever I can stand to automate, and still pick the kids up from school every afternoon.
Why I write it down
I write here to document the build honestly... what shipped, what broke, and the system I actually used. Not the highlight reel. My rule for this month is ship before build, and I break it often enough that I had to write it down.
That's what I'm building. How about you?
I post my week every Sunday. Tell me about yours on LinkedIn, or get the long reads by email.
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