Emila Yusof

HDUP SEORANG BLOGGER or Life as a blogger is a contest hosted by Denaihati and sponsored by eQurban.com.

This entry is related to my first post – HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER I.

Have you read the part one yet? Ok, cool. Now the next thing you need to know is why Emila blogs?

I actually blog just for fun in the beginning and it became serious when I quit my 9 to 5 job. I mostly share my artworks with people with the hope of getting constructive comments and from there I would try to improve my work. Later on, I developed an interest of becoming a children’s book illustrator and I see that blogging is just the right platform to get my art and self known to public. And so I built up my portfolio from scratch, from doing personal artworks to taking up commission jobs. I recorded everything in my blog. I joined social networks to connect with people and let them know what’s new in my blog.

I took the opportunity of blogging and tried making some money by doing paid posts, sell hand-painted totes, create illustrations for online shops such as GCU, Imagekind, Zazzle and Etsy. I made quite a descent pocket money but that does not gain me a lot of money, so I decided to open up my own online little shop to sell my stuff and take design jobs for blog makeovers or header illustrations or personalised dolly (thanks to my blogger buddy, Marzie for the idea of selling the dolly). Alhamdulillah, todate, I get a lot of online commission jobs.

My effort of getting myself known has been fruitful. Two years ago, a publisher discovered me! And last year, I won big; I was the first winner of Foldees.com greeting card contest and bagged a Wacom tablet plus hard cold cash of RM2500.  And early this year, I became the Grand Prize winner of Blog4FT contest for my “Kuala Lumpur: A to Z Fun things to do with Kids” entry. It was an illustrated e-book that I offer for free downloads. This has won me a brand new Peugeot 308 Vti!! Back in 2007, I made it to the Top 5 of AMBP list and got to stay at Awana Genting. And best thing is, todate, I have thousands of friends locally and internationally.

My son, Yassin, posing with our winning car. He and his dad were my biggest supporters throughout the Blog4FT contest.

You see, being a blogger is worth it. If not for blogging, I would not have been invited to join such contests and win something. If not for blogging, I would have not been discovered by  Linda Tan Lingard who is willing to publish my first picture book and sponsor my trip to Italy to attend the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and made it possible for me to blog from Italy. If not for blogging, I would have not met Yusof Gajah, the famous award-winning illustrator who has made it possible for me to join the Words+Pictures=Book, Contemporary Malaysian Picture Book Illustration Exhibition at Petronas Gallery.

Somewhere near Trevi, Italy

You see, being a blogger is really worth it. It has realised a dream of a typical housewife to be a children’s book writer and illustrator and get rewarded with things that she could not buy on her own.

This is my story; life as a blogger. HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER.

p/s: I am taking this opportunity to thank all of you who has made my blogging life a successful one. A BIG THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

Related Posts:
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER I
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER II

This contest is hosted by Denaihati and sponsored by eQurban.com.

It was RM25.47 last week and when I check today, it’s RM42.45!

How cool! Faster, if you haven’t already done so, you better register for ChurpChurp now. This is much more better than the pay per click ads which you can get only about RM10 per 3 – 6 months!

Go to ChurpChurp now and start receiving tweet assignments! You can read my previous post about how to join and what’s the benefit.

HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER or Life as a blogger is a contest hosted by Denaihati and sponsored by eQurban.com.

Here’s my story as a blogger:

When I first started blogging, it was on rememory.com early 2002 (or was it late 2001? I kinda forgot but it was circa those two years). That time it was just known as online journal. I had more than 50 entries. One of it has won me a USD100 amazon.com voucher. I was estatic! I spent the voucher on Encarta Encylopaedia, an Einstein book for my hubby who was my boyfriend back then, a few good novels including Home is Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts; my favourite of all time.

I made news friends from Malaysia not to mention a buddy also on rememory.com, Khemy, as well as friends across the universe. But I was not really satisfied with it as I cannot adjust the look of my page. And so I abandoned the journal. I visited the site once in a while but came to know that it was closed down back in 2008. If it is still there, I certainly will give my link and let you read all the nonsense that I wrote. Lol.

It was in middle 2005 when I registered for Friendster. I had few posts as well and my only friends were Marzie my colleague (yes, Marzie is my longtime blogging buddy) and Helmy. Comments only came from them, not leaving behind Daliza, another colleague of mine, also Helmy’s wife.

Being a person who likes to change things and have it my way, I was not satisfied with my Friendster’s look. I could not do what I want to do and so I registered for Blogspot late 2006. I was so happy because I finally found a platform where I can change the look to suit my liking. It stayed on for a year before I decided to change to WordPress. And so I got myself my own domain and hosting and transferred all posts from Blogspot to WordPress. I lost over 1000 comments as I did not know how to transfer them. Boy! It was sure tough to learn WordPress but over time, I managed to get acquainted with the platform. A basic webmaster course sponsored by the company I was working with back in 2003 really did helped me in understanding html, javascript and php better.

Well, here I am today, still using WordPress. Have been using it for three years now and don’t think I will jump to another platform in the near future. Buy hey, who knows, I might change to Joomla tomorrow. Haha, kidding!

Being a blogger is not always easy. I mean as a freelancer like me, I depend a lot on blogging. I have so many stories to share but as for now, it is sufficient to tell you how I started blogging, when I started and what platform did I used.

I am certainly not a pioneer but my blogging life started some eight years ago. I will share more aspects on my Life as a Blogger or HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER on my second post on 29th August. Stay tune.

Related Posts:
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER I
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER II

This contest is hosted by Denaihati and sponsored by eQurban.com.

Denaihati is hosting a contest Hidup Seorang Blogger and registration is open up to 11.59pm today. Sorry for such short notice but I just knew about this. I have registered mine to be eligible to enter the contest.

To register, go to Contest Hidup Seorang Blogger and leave your name, URL and PR. Those with PR 2 and above only can join this contest. After that, you have to write 2 compulsory posts on 22 August and 29 August, both before midnight. Main keyword is Hidup Seorang Blogger and you have to link back to Denaihati.

Contest ends 6 September 2010. For more details visit Contest Hidup Seorang Blogger. Hurry, register now to enter.

Related Posts:

HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER I
HIDUP SEORANG BLOGGER II

I have problems when trying to save or publish post manually despite two posts published yesterday. The error I was getting was nothing found for wp-admin Post php. I tried changing the text and even the size and name of my images like I did yesterday but it didn’t work. I also couldn’t post codings/html scripts to my text widgets. And so, I googled more about this problem and found out that it was the mod security problem.

I tried to disable mod security by adding a code to my .htaccess file but it’s not working and so I e-mailed the support center of the hosting provider, in my case, Mesrahosting dot net. They helped me via e-mail messages. I asked them to whitelist my website.

Voila! Everything went back to normal but I am told to be careful of cyber attacks. It’s like playing the war games here…I have to look for solution now to protect my blog.

So, what the heck is mod security?

ModSecurity is a web application firewall that can work either embedded or as a reverse proxy. It provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and allows for HTTP traffic monitoring, logging and real-time analysis. Therefore, for obvious reasons, many hosts have this module compiled.

I am happy but a bit worried now, but since I can already post up my entry like normal, I guess I go now and do my laundry.

Haha.

Be back in the evening with more posts. I have so many things to say.

Hey y’all! Been having the above error every time I try to publish a new post. To make matter worst, I upgraded to WordPress 3.0.1! I thought that by upgrading the version, the problem would go away. But no…suddenly it went blank!! Somehow managed to get it back by installing 3.0.1 MANUALLY. Disabled all the plugins and later installed them one by one to see which one was having crisis with the new 3.0.1. So far, it’s WordPress Backup plugins.

See below post? I’ve been trying to put it up since morning. I did managed to put up the text and Khemy did managed to leave a comment but when I tried to add a picture, it went “nothing-found-for-wp-admin”. So I deleted it and tried to put a new one with the different text but with same picture. I was like making hundred rounds on a roundabout. Lol! So later when I got tired, I thought of changing the size of the picture and renamed it. Voila! It went through!

Weird.

All my linkies were gone.They should’ve appeared automatically under inactive widgets tab in the widgets page but they were not there. Ah well, will put it up from time to time if I remember.

When I wanted to login few days ago, I got this message:

Network Error (tcp_error)
A communication error occurred: “Operation timed out”
The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.
For assistance, contact your network support team.

I thought there was something wrong with the hosting provider, so I messaged them. They replied saying that it was all good at their end; that the managed to see my blog clearly. Then my husband thought it was the modem. We changed to our old modem and reset everything, but the network error won’t go away. Then I contacted TM Streamyx. They tried to help me over the phone. We tried the command prompt and even tried keying- in the DNS addresses but the stubborn error still won’t go away. The officer filed a report and gave me a report number and said that an expert will find out what is the problem and will contact me soon. So far, it has been 3 hours and no calls yet from them. I hope they will call me at least by Monday.

For the time being, I am using MAXIS broadband modem which I bought from my sister last month. Bought a hotlink prepaid card and subscribe to the monthly Rm68/500MB package. It is very slow but at least I can login my blog and blog away.

Have you came across such problem? If you have, how did you resolve the issue? Please let me know by leaving a comment or two in my comment box. Thank you so much!

Remember that I blogged about how my PC crashed? Remember how I wept when my computer died on me? And the hardship of not having a computer to do my works?

Well, I am weeping no more. A good samaritan, a well-known and respected blogger, Denaihati, came to my rescue. He offered me a good deed of topping-up the balance of what I have collected so far to buy a new computer! Thank you so much, Denaihati! In return, I have to give back and offer good deed to those in needs. This reminds me of the movie Pay It Forward. I really love the movie and never did I imagined that it will happen to me. So, for a start, I am offering free tutorial for those who are interested in learning the basics of drawing/painting. And it will not stop there as I will find many more ways to give back.

Denaihati started blogging in 2008, if I’m not mistaken. With a motto, “Living to give” (Hidup untuk Memberi), he started building up his blog from scratch and over time, he gained a great amount of loyal readers and followers. His blog is made up of various posts about family, life, blogging, current issues and many more. Every post is of a good quality as he will do a thorough research before writing. He has came up with several blogging contests in which every contest, he donated for charity and also gave option for winners to donate too.

To get to know more about Denaihati, please do visit his blog Denaihati.com. Entries are mostly in Malay and soon he will also write more in English.

I take this opportunity to thank Fliffy, Little Mickys, Online Hijab and Anny Oon for also contributing to my PC fund. Credits to all under Help Me Buy A PC Donators on my sidebar.

Yesterday, I finally got to meet Enida, my online friend who is here for a holiday!

We have been online friends for almost a year now and it is really great to finally meet Enida in person! And also, I got to meet her adorable son, Edrick!

We met in Ampang Point and talked over Penang cuisine! We talked a lot and exchanged stories about ourselves. I felt like we have known each other all my life and it was like meeting a very long lost friend. The feeling is great and we definitely going to meet again before she left for Russia, where she currently resides with her husband and two children, Edrick and Kitreena. Kitreena could not make it as she has to attend school. Knowing that I love magnets, Enida showered me with beautiful ones along with porcelain thimble and lapel pins which she bought from her recent trips to Sweden, Canada and Australia.

Thank you Enida!! I love them all especially Sverigeflicka & Sverigepojke!