Guest Post About New Site Monkeybars for Authors and Artists

In the LinkedIn sub-group "Ebooks, Ebook Readers—SELF-PUBLISHING" I read about a new site — Monkeybars.net — that sounded very innovative. I asked questions of Fergal O'Moore, who had posted the announcement about the site, and his answers were so detailed that I got his permission to use his information as a guest post here. (Fergal is executive vice president of business development for Monkeybars.)



The question I originally asked Fergal was how the Monkeybars store function would work. Here is Fergal's reply:

In the simplest way it would work the same way as sending people to Amazon or Smashwords. Monkeybars does not expect any exclusivity so it would be another place to upload your books for sale. From your own site you can direct people to Monkeybars to purchase your products.

(Note that at the moment the site is set up for digital products including ebooks. At a later time physical products may be able to be sold via the site.)

We have a widget that you can embed for your Monkeybars shop (or you can just use the link) or you can embed each piece of content that is sold on your Monkeybars shop.

You can also "Share" a link to your Monkeybars store or your individual books on other social networks to promote your books. This directs people back to Monkeybars.

The big difference is that, instead of Monkeybars charging 30-40% just to have your books listed, we provide a platform that allows you to allocate a percentage of the price of your book to the rewards program.

When people buy the book from Monkeybars and recommend it on any of the social networks they use, the recommenders will be rewarded for any subsequent purchases from the portion of the sale you set aside.

The recommendation is tracked across all social networks and across five degrees of separation so you are incentivizing the buyers to make your work go viral since they get a reward every time the book is purchased.

You have control over price and reward value. The cool thing is that everyone who becomes a new member from your invitation or because they bought one of you books (on Facebook or Twitter, etc.) will become part of your network. You will earn rewards on any of their purchases or subscriptions even if it is not your content.

We are kind of like a co-op consisting of content creators and content consumers, and the revenue is split between them (for creating and for spreading the word).

In summary, we are a store like the other locations. We give the authors or publishers control and allow them to sell for free (up to a certain storage limit although for books it is sufficient for hundreds).

We provide tools to promote very effectively on all the major social networks allowing you to really leverage these sites.

We also give you the ability to earn additional revenue just by building your network of fans and customers.

And you can still sell on the other platforms provided these do no have exclusivity. We have a number of authors and publishers in our market that also sell on both Amazon and Smashwords.

There is a lot of additional information in our help and how it works sections including FAQ and merchant tips.

Perhaps a good way to explain how you can have a "shop" within the marketplace on Monkeybars is to have a look at Charlotte Vale-Allen, a New York Times bestselling author who has books on Monkeybars: www.monkeybars.net/booksbycharlottevaleallen.

This link takes you to her Monkeybars shop page where only her items are listed. But her items are also in the open "Market" along with other books, where books can be filtered by genre or searched for.



You can explore the site and consider joining. (Note from Phyllis: By joining through this link you will be joining the site for free while also connecting directly with me and becoming part of my network on the site.)