Locationary: The World's Place Database

Locationary is a website that rewards you for sharing your local knowledge.

By adding new places to their database and by correcting inaccurate or out-of-date information, you'll earn "tickets" which you can later enter into drawings for cash prizes. You'll also share in 50% of the revenue that Locationary receives from the places you update.

Their idea is to become the new global place directory where local search websites, mobile application developers, and others will be able to download and use the collected data.

They are collecting details for commercial, public, and residential places in every town all over the world. No matter where you live you an become a part of this process.

I joined Locationary in October of 2010 after hearing about it on the forum of Moola.com. Both websites were started by Grant Ritchie, a lawyer, technologist, and serial entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada.

Shares: Each place has a certain number of shares. You collect them when you're the first to add a place or update its information. In the future when these places advertise, the people who have shares will receive 50% of what Locationary receives from the place. So, if Locationary earn $1000, you and the other shareholders will split $500. The more shares you hold, the more you recieve.

Tickets: When you add places or update information, you'll collect tickets too. Once you save up enough you can enter tickets into draws for cash prizes. 

Prize Draws: One ticket equals one entry into a prize drawing. You must keep a balance of 500,000 tickets and 100 shares in order to bid on a prize. Right now the "prizes" are small amounts of money from $0.05 to $25.00. I imagine those amounts will increase as the site develops.

Add a Place: You fill in the Country, State/Province, City, Place Name, and Street Address. If the place is already in the database you'll see that info on the right hand side in a warning box. If it is there, click on the item to be taken to their page. You can still fill in any missing data and earn shares and tickets.

Find a Place to Update: You're given just two fields to fill in. "What are you looking for?" and "In What City?". Once filled in you'll see a list of possible matches. Click on the one you want and fill in any missing data to earn shares and tickets. You can also click on the Find Dupes link to help eliminate duplicate listings for the same location.

Update Your Neighborhood: Enter an address or intersection. A Google map of the area will appear with markers for different places. If you are familiar with them, click on any and start filling in as much as you know.

Missions: There are usually certain tasks that Locationary offers that come along with bonus tickets in addition to their usual share and ticket amounts. The ones I've seen have all been to track down hard to find official websites. They're actually kind of fun if you like sleuthing the net.

Find & Fix Bad Data: This page shows you data that has just been entered by someone. They like for the info to be verified by other users. I haven't tried this one out yet.

Invite Friends: If you invite friends to join Locationary, you get bonus tickets based on their activity. Whenever they collect tickets by adding and updating places, you get bonus tickets too. You also get bonus tickets on the people your friends invite, up to four levels deep.

  Level 1: Friends you invite: you get a 10% bonus
Level 2: people they invite, you get a 8% bonus
Level 3: people they invite, you get a 4% bonus
Level 4: people they invite, you get a 2% bonus