I have been blogging in my mother tongue Malayalam since August 2006. Through years of blogging I had got lot of friends all over my state Kerala as well as outside Kerala. One fine morning I received a mail from one of my fellow bloggers. It was a Keralite blogger itself and that was the only relation between us. The mail was an invitation to me as well as some others. He just put a line meaning that ‘earn some money through your writings’

I had had an English blog dealing environmental matters which were started years ago. Due to my own laziness posting in that blog was stopped. And at this time again an invitation to write in English , but a difference that I’ll earn some bucks. So I visited the referred site and joined then itself. That great day was 23/9/09 I think and the site was none other than this www.boddunan.com.

Like many other sites I joined the welcome message from boddunan.com also remained in my inbox for about one month without further action. I don’t remember what was the trigger that made me to post my first post in boddunan.com. But that was a beginning – a historic beginning I may say. I don’t remember that golden date.

The golden date that I posted my first article in boddunan was 26/9/2009.It was about our OCCEANSAT. I got a cash credit of Rs 10/- for this. I felt little sad for this low payment. But I used to read article by others and found long articles with cash credit upto Rs 100/- It was something about CRO and was with some photos or images. In many other articles also I found images and noted that their credits are also high. Then I realized that an article having many words (later I understood it is more than 1000 words) and with some images will be paid highly. Still later I realised that it is the quality that decides the credit of the article. I edited my first article and received Rs 30/- as its credit finally.

Like posting in blog I posted my first article in large fonts. The next day of posting the article I anxiously checked the status of my article. For my disappointment it was not reviewed. Second also I logged in anxiously and the result hadn’t changed. On third day my article review result came; it was not approved!! But I was directed to post in normal letters. I made it in large letters because in article submission window it appeared very small .So naturally I suspected to read it, all should have to use a reading lens also !!!

Since the editing method was not known to me I copied the whole content to notepad , font size changed and posted back. By God’s sake somehow it got cleared. But now I sees many articles in this large font as well as mixed font.

Soon I began to participate in forum discussions. It was an interesting one because our views can be expressed openly there. One fine morning I saw a Group Discussion thread in a forum. The topic of the discussion was “How to face an Interview ?”. The post was by a Spiderman faced one with a strange name “Maverick”. On that day he was just like any other member, to me.

I had faced many interviews in my life. So this topic felt me very good and I posted my reply. Unfortunately only a few participants was there in that discussion. I have no idea that being a Group Discussion I have to post replies frequently. Hence I posted my reply and surfed the rest days through other discussions. Like me all participants in that discussion posted only one reply.

That discussion closed after 1 week or 10 days. Two more days elapsed and the result published.. Surprisingly I WAS THE WINNER. I got a cash credit of Rs 50/- and that was my first triumph in a Group Discussion , first earning through online and first award from Boddunan.com!!

After this I participated in many Group Discussions. Eventhough I performed in them to my best I couldn’t win the discussion for some weeks. Also some results declared were too controversial to accept. I openly told it (not in forum to make the matter worst) to moderator through PM. Since the reply was not satisfactory I kept away from the next Group Discussion . I never opened the thread of that discussion. But after one week when my mind cooled I again began to participate in Group Discussions. I won many GDs after that and in some discussions the controversies were too long and too bitter.

I used to participate in all forum discussions and posted my own discussions. As a result I received the second award from Boddunan.com namely Forum Supporter of the Week. The cash credit was RS 50/- again. This award motivated me and participated in discussions with increased enthusiasm. As a result the next week also I won the Forum Supporter of the Week award!! It was beyond my expectation.

The consecutive awards boosted my activities in forum and I really expected a hatrick. But contrary to my expectation a member who was active weeks ago (yes, when I complained I was informed that the present winner hadn’t given the award yet and giving me a third time will invite criticism.). He was not able to award it on that week due to other member’s performance and this week they found a gap!! I kept silence on hearing this strange words.

Almost all the members of Boddunan family goes to poll section. But when I went there I found very silly polls like which mobile you use , which is the best internet connection and so on. Almost all polls were silly and voting on them also was very low. Soon there introduced a daily contest for high vote casting and comments. Also creative poll of the week award was introduced for encouraging good polls. My first impression on the poll section being bad I again kept away from that section. Still I used to read articles and comment on them and thus won the top commenter of the day award many times.

But there came a thought in my mind about winning the whole awards in Boddunan at least once and for this I have to win the creative poll of the week award and top voter of the day. That thought made me to enter the poll section and through repeated submission of variety of polls I won the creative poll of the week award also. To win top voter award was not at all a Himalayan task and one day I sat to cast votes and won that award also!

In forum discussions I used to put my own suggestions to improve the site. Many of them were discussed in forums thoroughly some of them were accepted. I felt very proud when my suggestions were accepted. So when Adhoc award was introduced for first time I shared it with Mr.Amit Warkari. I won that award three more times later and I think I am the only one to win it four times.

As my forum postings continued my border status changed rapidly from one stage to another stage. From fresh boarder I became a junior boarder and when turned to senior boarder at 100^th post I noticed the change. After 250^th post I think I became an expert boarder and on crossing 500^th post I became a golden boarder. Some members were already there as gold boarders when I reached this level. Finally that day came. On 18.1.2010 I posted my 1000^th post in Boddunan.com and became the first Platinum Member of the site. I received 500 bonus points on crossing this landmark. The 1000 post included 18 articles also. After two days on 20.1.2010 I posted my 1000^th post in forum section. After that I used to post in forums as usual. The next aim was diamond mate at 2500. But I felt that some other has to cross it first than me and hence I slowed my pace. As expected Deepti crossed it first and I followed her and some others after a short interval. In November 2010 I posted the 5000^th post in forums to become the third Maestro Mate after Deepti and Chinmoy Mukherjee. But Deepti and Chinmoy retarded in further movement and crossed both of them to become the first emperor of Boddunan.com by posting the 10000^th forum post in the first week of September 2011 which was also my two year completing month in Boddunan.

So far I hadn’t told about the payment received from Boddunan. On 4/1/2010 I received the first cheque from Boddunan. It was Rs 1026/- and after deducting courier charges the cheque amounted Rs 976/-. Thus within three months of joining I was able to cross the minimum pay out limit. I collected this amount mostly from articles at that time.

But I felt that most of the articles are getting low credits recently. The authors had to spend 2 to 3 hours to prepare an article of at least 1000 words. For such an article at least 30 rupees was expected. Also it was paid so. But when the site traffic and site members increased Boddunan changed a little bit! Article writers who are really making the site rich were paid too low. So I began to keep away from articles posting from 2010 February onwards. After 20 months gap I recently posted an article in article section related to Deewali contest!

A number of awards were newly introduced in Boddunan which I forgot to mention. The Daily forum activator award , the member of the week award , caption writing contest etc are the important among them. As a desire to win all those awards I tried my best and won all those awards many times. If you also try to win them surely it will be in your way.

Between this I received the Boddunan T-shirt also which was distributed for the active forum members. But I am sorry to say that the quality of the T-shirt was very low. Also now as the active member of the site we expect laptops as the gift! Also I completed 10 first prizes in GD contest. As an appreciation to this I received a certificate from Boddunan team. But as per the suggestion from me, the certificate for winning different contests were not received yet.

I think the land mark in the history of this site was the decision to share its revenue among the active members which really encourage and motivate all the members. The revenue sharing programme thus started in 2009 November. By declaring the revenue share of the month October 2011 it crossed 24 episodes and I became the first member to be in the list of all these 24 episodes. It was another distinction and reputation that I received in this site.

As the winner of many group discussions I got a chance to become the moderator of GD when the original moderator was on leave for a short interval. Thus I put some hot topics for discussion and boddunan members accepted them whole heartedly and wide discussion took on them. Now also I am enjoying the position as both moderator and a participant of Group discussion contests.

Friends, so far I had discussed my good and bad experiences in this site. Eventhough you I have some bitter experiences I sticked here with tolerance and tried my best to improve the site in many ways. The recently started cross word was my suggestion. Fortunately I became the first to solve one of them. I think you people also will have many ideas and lot of suggestion to improve and to make this a number one site in India and this world. From my experience I say if you work hard here definitely you will be rewarded in some way. I received many honours and many friends here. Also my language ability improved very well after joining this site. All of you can also utilize this site for improving yourself.

Recently I took a print out of the awards that I won here. To my surprise it was 7 pages! Here is the list of awards that I won so far.

1. GD - first prize 10 times & second prize 3 times
2. Forum Supporter of the Week – 3
3. Top Commenter of the Day – 6
4. Adhoc Awards – 4
5. Creative Poll of the week – 1
6. Top Voter of the Day – 2
7. Daily forum activator – 55 times
8. Member of week level 1 – 2
9. Member of week level 2 – 5
10. Member of week level 3 – 22
11. Caption Writing - first prize 3 times & second prize 2 times

Total 118 awards

So my dear friends , it is your , your own decision that makes you successful. Try hard and earn more and also learn more from here. Start it now itself as time never stops for none. I wish you all a very best of luck.