Gather A Cool Website
I have just recently joined another awesome website. It's called Gather. It is a community of people who gather to enjoy other members posts, photographs, and videos. Once you join you have a profile page that is very in depth. You may choose to enter as much or as little information about yourself as you wish. There are sections for your basic profile as well as a section for more in depth information about you, again as much or as little as you wish. There is an activity section that shows the things you are doing within the website and you may choose to show this activity publicly or not at all. Another section is all about your interests such as favorite movies, books, music and other interests. There is an affiliations section where you can display your schooling, job info and clubs you belong to if you so wish. Below all this is a wall where your friends can "ping" you, sending you little notes or just to say good morning. Another section will display the friends you have made at Gather and any groups you have joined since joining Gather. I will explain more about the groups in a different section.
So the idea of Gather is to share your content with others. You can upload videos and photos for others to view. You earn points for posting and for viewing. The lowest payout on Gather is 625 points for a 10 dollar gift card to various stores. You can save up past that amount for bigger gift cards or even cash deposited into your paypal account. I have only loaded photographs so far and have only been a member for 6 days now but I have earned 134 points so far. I don't think that's to bad for 6 days. Only 491 points to get to a 10 dollar gift card. Again I don't think you can make a living doing this but every little bit helps. And I am having great fun.
The Groups
I am a member of another website very similar to Gather, but Gather has something the other website doesn't and I think it's a great idea. They have groups. These groups are created by other members of Gather and there are many different groups dealing in many different topics. Some groups only want your photos. Some are topic specific like fishing, river only photos, and winter scenes only. No adult content is allowed on this site. Some groups want anything you have such as posts about news or things going on in your life as well as photos and videos. Each member who creates a group decides what that particular group is about. It's an awesome idea. And I am going to tell you why. At the other site that is similar to Gather when you post a photo lets say, it is posted once. You can rename the photo and re upload it to put it into another category if you wish but this is very time consuming. At Gather when you are in the process of uploading a photo it will ask you where you wish to post this photo. If you are a member of 10 groups that will take your photos then you can post that picture in all 10 groups at the same time with the same caption and title. So now you are posting one photograph 10 times with one click. A awesome idea. And very time saving. So if I have a picture of myself sitting in a boat on a river fishing, I can post this pic to my fishing group as well as to my river photo group. What a great idea. Some groups as I said will take any and I mean any photo you have regardless of topic so you include the fishing in a river photo to those groups as well and you have posted one photograph 10 times or how ever many groups you belong to. The more views you have the more points you earn.
Building Your Friends List
You may already have friends on Gather and you can add them as friends. On everyone's profile page there is an orange " Add as Friend" button to click and you have the option of sending them an email within Gather requesting to be a friend. The more friends you have the more people to look at your content the more points you earn. Many people will view your content and don't have to be on your friends list but in my experience at Gather and the other website I am a member of, my friends will continue to view my content and I view theirs. We as friends are helping each other earn more points or money. Any where on Gather when you see a persons screen name or their real name you can click on it to be taken to their profile where you can request a friend. Every one I have met on Gather have been very nice and there has been no problems. There are some posts about politics and religion and sometimes those topics can draw negative responses from people but if that is not your cup of tea it can easily be avoided by not commenting or even viewing posts of this nature. You can also invite your friends from your email accounts and such and the help section at Gather is very well put together and easy to understand. I admit I haven't looked at everything Gather has to offer but I am learning.
In Conclusion
I personally think if you have some spare time this website is well worth a look. You might find this is something you want to give a try. It is horribly fun and you can earn a bit of cash for the photographs you already have. There are some awesome photos to look at and sometimes you learn new things just by viewing these photos. This website is very well put together and I have yet to find anything that doesn't work well, and the speed of the uploads is really fast.
You don't have to be a member to view posts or photos, but if you want to see a friends posts you would need to put their Gather name in the search bar to find them. Other than that all I can say is go take a look if you have the time, you will like what you see.