Short version (TL;DR)

1. Bringing back “Sharenator Original” section of the site
2. Rewarding Original Content (monetary Youtube like Partner program)
3. Quality control

Longer version

Many Sharenators have expressed concern about the lack of original content on Sharenator. Some took initiative and made really interesting posts. Others generously upvoted.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Could original content thrive on Sharenator? What can we do to make it so?

Here’s my proposal and I’d like to hear (read) your opinions and suggestions. Just note that this is just and idea in consideration and I need your help polishing it.


Bringing Sharenator Original back
Once upon a time Sharenator had “Original” category on the site. Most of the post in this section were created by either me or Darius in effort to promote Sharenator. The posts would receive a lot of attention, bring new visitors to the site and that’s how the first members of the site learned about Sharenator. Later on, we got buried under increasingly big to-do list for Sharenator and this section was abandoned. We had to remove Sharenator Original category as nothing was happening there.
How about we bring this category back and everybody could contribute? A simple check box “This is an original post” could be added to “New Post” page.


Sharenator Partner program
Points are cool, but how about real coins? As a perfect example I’d love to mention Youtube - it is a very good example of a proper partnership program and monetary incentivisation system. You get accepted to the program if you contribute with original content and your content is good/popular enough.

Currently Youtube pays $2.5 for 1000 views. Just to put things in perspective, if Sharenator had such system, the most viewed post on Sharenator (“World’s strangest looking animals” - 1.8 million views) would be worth 4,500 USD. A post with 10,000 views would yield 25 USD.

There are 7 posts with more than 1 million views, 189 posts with more than 100,000 views and over 2,100 posts with more than 10,000 views. Most of these posts are still getting a good deal of traffic passively (either from people browsing the top lists on Sharenator, or from search engines - Google seems to like Sharenator). There is a lot of potential for new posts.

Not only this may be a good motivation to contribute with good original content, but this would also make sharenator attractive to a lot more people, especially the creative ones.


Becoming a Partner and quality control
The rules would be simple - make a good post following the quality guidelines and you would be invited. Each post marked as original would have to go through quality control team (in this case, team Sharenator). The rules would not be too restrictive - simply following the TOS of the site, no copy-pasting from other websites, all sources must be attributed.

Promoting your social pages
This one would be for people wanting to promote their brand or services. For example, a photographer wanting to advertise their facebook, twitter or simply personal website - such badges could be displayed next to author’s post and we would make sure they are well visible, catching the attention of visitors browsing the site.

Brainstorm room
(again, another idea that needs polishing)
Sometimes a good article idea would come very easily, but sometimes inspiration may be needed. Some people have way too many ideas. For this reason, Sharenators would have access to a section with article ideas posted by others. Everybody would be able to post their ideas, vote on ideas they like and comment (post contributions).
The entire point of this would be to make it fun, collaborative and competitive.
That’s when our crediting system comes to help - you would credit people that helped you brainstorm the article.

New platform
Sharenator v2 is coming soon. The new version will include: A fresh design, live commenting system and most importantly - ability to create and follow new boards or communities on Sharenator. This means that Sharenator will not be just funny pictures anymore. Photographers (rock climbers, cooks, technology enthusiasts, gamers, etc) will have their sections on the site. While this could cause some unintended consequences, like Bacon community waging a war against Vegan community (alright, I’m actually looking forward to this), the most important thing is that Sharenator will be a perfect platform for wide variety of topics for posts, discussions and articles. It would be simple to choose a topic to write about - simply write about things you love.

How about “Photography” for a quick example?
8 Effects Every Photographer Should Know About and What is Lomography by CallMeGoogle are a couple of excellent articles.
And here are a few posts with SuDoku’s photogprahy: SuDoku's Irish Adventure, Photos of mine, I call to the great members of the ShareNation: Follow up, My little project, A few of my photographs.

I really look forward to having Photography section on the site.


Alright, let’s list some Pros and Cons
Post a comment if you see any - I’ll update the list.

Pros:
- More original content on Sharenator
- New creative members joining the site
- ?

Cons:
- There may be people trying to game the system to get into the top list with their posts to get more traffic (not really a big problem, we can detect that)
- People will be trying to abuse it (regulation and quality control is a must)
- ?


So, what do you you guys think?
Ideas posted here still need polishing, so any feedback would really help. Is this a good idea? Would you participate? Do you see any drawbacks or any potential issues with this proposal?