Monkey Bars Review

I found a great new site. It's called Monkey Bars.

It's a distributor of indie content, and not just books: you can buy videos, music, books, and artwork. It's all digital, of course, but there's a fun tweak that makes this site unique from any other distributor I've seen so far.

You can make money for recommending the things you like.

Yep.

Here's how it works:

Sign up and set up your account.
Add friends (add me!)
Browse for items you like. Share them via facebook, twitter, what have you…the more you get your link out there, the better your chances of making money.
When someone clicks on your link and buys the product, you get "rewards"…i.e. a portion of the product price.
Repeat steps 2-5.

So the basic premise is that authors set the award price for their work as a percentage of the total price. My book Lichgates is set at an award of 30%, which is the same royalty I pay Amazon for ever book sold. But here, that money goes to you as a thank you for sharing my work. This way, both the author and the reader win.

Of course, Monkey Bars has to make money somehow, and they do. The site is free to use, but you can upgrade to paid subscriptions for higher rewards, more perks, and other funsies. They leave the basic principle alone, though, so you don't have to pay them to make money off the site. It's really innovative, and I love it.

The downside is that this is still beta. There are bugs. I tried to upload a new cover for the book, and it gave me an error. I tried changing my password, and it gave me an error. I'm banking on them fixing these bugs, though, and soon.

So make sure you check out this site. I think it's going to quickly surpass Smashwords as a method for buying indie work. Be sure to add me as a friend on Monkey Bars once you join, and please stop by the Lichgates page to comment on and rate my book. Thanks!