If someone had told me on the morning of March 1, 2011 when Unboxed Writers was launched that we would be crossing 60,000 hits by mid-June, I would have smiled wistfully. Because, that kind of thing, doesn’t happen, does it? At least, not often and not to people who launch a dream without the luxury of a business plan or a sprawling office, no guarantee of financial returns and no idea if  in the virtual world, someone will read writers driven by just passion.

 But here we are and the buzz the site has generated makes people believe, we are entrepreneurs rather than writers but we are writers, first and foremost. A freelance writer mailed me recently to say, “The site seems to be generating revenue so why won’t you pay the writers?”

 Well, the answer to that is, so far the site has generated opportunities and visibility for individual writers but hopefully, it will now generate revenue too because I believe, content brings readership and the rest will follow as a matter of course. I don’t doubt that for a second and what do you know, we have these prosperous looking Google ads on the site now though we don’t know how many readers will click on them, how much revenue they will generate and what we will get from them. But the point is not that. The point is that in our bones, it feels right to be on this path.

 There are few things in life one just knows to be true and this is one of them. We know for sure that a content driven site finds its readership and then advertising follows. Yes, direct advertising would help us and we look forward to partners who will advertise their businesses, big and small on our site. But nothing in the meanwhile can mean more to us than to put fresh stories up everyday. We have more than 275 stories in our archives.

 The most thrilling and rewarding part has been to post a new story and see the sudden spurt in reader hits. It has been wonderful, this connect with readers and the quest for like-minded writers, many of whom have found us and are a part of our family now. And no words can sum up what it means to watch a dream become more and more tangible with each passing day.

Over the past few months, we have had the honour of using stories by Sahitya Akademi winners like Mahesh Dattani and Shashi Deshpande. There have been generous contributions from authors like Vijay Nair, Rupa Gulab and a serialised unpublished novella by Anu Kumar. We can never repay them though we will attempt to at some point.

 Our tireless Delhi writer Poonam Goel has been covering art and culture events, penning her encounters with Gulzar, SH Raza and a poignant tribute to MF Husain. Vaishali Shroff starts a new column on parenting from this week. There have been travel pieces (Dianne Winter Sharma, take a bow!), film reviews, interviews with film makers like Amole Gupte and Onir and theatre artists. Fiction, poetry (Natascha Shah, Averil Nunes, Insia Dariwala and Uma Iyer have a following already!), food columns and more by established and first time writers. We can proudly claim to be possibly the only website in the country with this amount of diversity.

 We were also media partners of the acclaimed and award winning play Butter and Mashed Banana and are now partnering The Blue Mug, which is being brought to Bangalore by Atul Kumar’s celebrated The Company Theatre. We are now looking for web partnerships with art galleries, theatre groups, event managers and film-makers who need quality reportage on their events. Magazines and newspapers who need free lance writers and good content. TLF  http://www.tlfmagazine.com/  is already our creative partner and is regularly publishing us in their pages. We have also had the pleasure of creating some media content for http://www.bornfree.co.in/ headed by actor Dia Mirza.

There is more to come because what are the odds that writers scattered in different parts of the country, a design editor in the US and an editor hacking away at an old computer at her home in Bangalore can synergise to this extent without even meeting once in real time?

 We are being noticed. And we realise that when free lance writers tell us how they are getting feelers from those wanting to start something “exactly like UBW.”  Well, the more, the merrier. We cannot patent our dream or ideas but we do know that UBW is not a vanity exercise. This is our blood, sweat and tears and also our smile of joy and vindication. And none of it would have been possible without you. Thank you. And again. We owe you a lifetime of stories.

 Reema Moudgil is the author of  Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )