Thank you to the blogs and forums that sent me the most traffic in the first half of the year. Also, I’d like to take a look back on the most popular posts of my p2p lending blog for the first half of the year.

Top Referrers:

• 1) Lazy Man and Money has sent me a good deal of traffic because I like his articles enough that I comment frequently on the site. Recent post I liked: Is organic food worth the money?
• 2) P2P No Bank – I even changed my blog theme to get back on this site.
• 3) The official prosper blog is also a good source of traffic. Not only does the official blog post the prosper numbers but it also posts interesting items like the history of p2p lending.
• 4) Rate Ladder often has interesting posts like the Zopa security issue.
• 5) Despite Peer Lend being more infrequent in posting than me. The site still sends me regular visitors.
• 6) The very unofficial prosper forums still send me traffic. I occasionally still visit there for posts like the Peak Prosper Theory.
• 7) Prosperous Land who unfortunately recently quit blogging had many good posts such as listing all the Prosper Days videos.
• 8 ) Lending Club’s Official Blog was also a frequent referrer.
• 9) I was surprised to see Moolanomy because I rarely comment there and don’t remember a particular post there that sent me a lot of traffic. I quite liked the recent post on building extra income streams.
• Wise Clerk was a top referrer.

My Top Popular Posts for the First Half of 2008:

• Advice for new P2P Lenders remains a favorite.
• The Lending Club Quiet Period round up of bloggers’ comments on the Lending Club suddenly announced quit period has also been a favorite.
• The review of my first loans with Lending Club has been my number three post for 2008 to date.
• The fact that Lending Club denies most loans has been a popular article.
• For some reason my article raking Glenn Chapman for his review of Prosper, Lending Club, and Zopa has been the next favorite.
• One of my favorites because I researched all the details – Prosper Marketplace removed criticisms from Wikipedia.
• One of my several posts reviewing Lending Club changes was popular.
• A follow up to the blog roundup of quiet period links, the second post of links related to the Lending Club Quiet Period has also been popular.
• When Richard Branson says GO FUND YOURSELF with Virgin Money, people listen.
• My reporting on PLR’s interview with the Chairman of Fynanz rounded out the top ten posts. (Link to original interview.)

So there we have it — the top ten referrers and posts for the first half of 2008

I am too busy to bother to make excuses for the lack of recent posts…

• First Two Months Blogging P2P Lending
• First Peer-to-Peer Lending Carnival
• Lending Club Quiet Period Announcement: A Blog RoundUp
• Second Peer to Peer Lending Carnival
• Lending Club Referral Program is Currently Dead…

Welcome to the 10th peer-to-peer lending blog carnival. There were some good submissions of a new market niche, a bonus program, two guides for borrowers, and a few P2P lending summary articles. I hope that you enjoy the articles.

• Wiseclerk posted about Zopa UK planning a Young Market to target borrowers who do not have a long credit history. This sounds like a needed market niche.
• Rate Ladder presents 8 Listing Strategies for the Best Prosper Loan Rates. I must agree with his advice to borrowers. See #7 — I always search first for loans that have endorsements from friends who have put money on the line. If friends have put up some of the money, I am much more willing to put down my money.

• The blog Earthlier Happy is the Rose Distilled submitted A Borrower’s Guide to Using Prosper. The guide starts by explaining the process and then moves on to some specific tips for borrowers. The list is short but good advice. For example, I have personally passed on several loans due to spelling errors in the loan description.

• Tom blogged about the details of Fynanz offering a huge bonus to lenders at Prosper Lending Review. Tom also mentions the referral program which is similar to Prosper’s.

• Rich Leverage summarized peer-to-peer lending in the post Making Extra Money With P2P Lending.

• DJMike also summarized P2P lending and borrowing at Prosper.com. You’ll want to see the link to his stats — $2,359 in loans with the first one being over 400 days ago and so far no defaults!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the 10th P2P Lending Carnival.

The previous carnival, number nine, was hosted at Rate Ladder and the post that started it all was at Lazy Man and Money.

If you want to participate in p2p lending carnival number 11, go to the submission form. Hosts are also needed, please contact Lazy Man Money to host.

• Second Peer to Peer Lending Carnival
• Submit for the next P2P Lending Carnival
• First Peer-to-Peer Lending Carnival
• P2P Lending Carnival #4
• Advice for Potential a New Peer-to-Peer Lender

P2P Lending has been in the mainstream media news a great deal lately. I decided to post a roundup of many of the recent news articles on Prosper.com, Lending Club, Zopa, GlobeFunder, and Virgin Money. It is unfortunate that Lending Club entered a quiet period just as they were gaining tremendous growth in loan volume.

CNBC February 5th, 2008: From Zero to Millions: Financing Your New Business:

Online Family Lending Use a lending network designed for inter-family loans, such as CircleLending.com. Tools at that site will help you and your relative come to terms on the length of the loan and the interest rate, and calculate the monthly payment amount. For $99, CircleLending issues a legally binding promissory note and a repayment schedule. For $9 per payment, the company will set up automatic repayments using electronic funds transfer.

Peer-to-peer Lending: Several websites now make it much easier to find an investor who will back your business. Check out prosper.com, lendingclub.com and zopa.com.

Lending Club’s founder financed his first company with personal loans and high-interest credit cards. He eventually sold the business to Oracle. That experience inspired his new company. Lending Club, which launched on Facebook in May 2007 and on its own site last September, uses technology to match borrowers to lenders willing to offer unsecured loans of $500 to $25,000 with three-year, fully amortizing terms.

The author, Laura Rowley, must have used some old notes because CircleLending.com was long ago purchased by Richard Branson and converted into Virgin Money.

Forbes February 11, 2008: Banking 2.0: New Capital Connections For Entrepreneurs:

Credit-market carnage makes it all the more important for small businesses to understand the full range of potential sources for capital. A growing alternative to traditional sources: person-to-person lending Web sites.

These sites, with names like Prosper.com, Zopa, Lending Club and GlobeFunder, use social networking tools and other software to simplify the borrowing and lending of capital between strangers and even family and friends. For entrepreneurs, these sites offer an alternative and needed source of capital. For lenders, the fast-growing sites offer competitive rates of return and the opportunity to easily participate in the cornerstone activity of capitalism.

I wonder if Maureen Farrell noticed that Globefunder’s lenders are the hedge fund set which I hardly call peer-to-peer lending.

Prosper.com employs an eBay or auction-style model and lets potential lenders both determine the interest rate and who gets funded in a several-week bidding process. Zopa.com used the auction model in the United Kingdom, but in the United States where it launched in December, it works directly with credit unions and lets these unions set the interest rate and decide whether to fund. Borrowers can lower their interest rate by asking lenders to purchase certificates of deposit against their loan for rates of 4.25% or below, and credit unions guarantee the CDs. Lending Club also sets the borrowers’ interest rate based on FICO scores and determines who gets funded. Once a rate is set, Lending Club matches lenders and borrowers by personal interests through their Web site or via Facebook. Borrowers share their stories, and then have a time window to see if enough lenders are willing to fund the loan.

GlobeFunder and Virgin Money USA don’t use social networking mechanisms. GlobeFunder allows borrowers to appeal for funding, determines an interest rate range, and then working with its partners–institutional investors and hedge funds–finds out whether there’s enough interest in the loan to fund it. Richard Branson’s new venture, Virgin Money USA, which was formerly Circle Lending, facilitates the transfer of money between friends and family. Friends and family members negotiate rates, but Virgin Money sets up payment schedules and legal documents and charges fees accordingly.

So Maureen Farrell did notice that GlobeFunder is for hedge-fund lenders. She probably wrote up one of the most concise descriptions of P2P lending sites I have seen in the above two paragraphs.

Right now, default rates at Prosper and Lending Club are relatively low, but that could change with the downturn in the economy. Prosper’s CEO Chris Larsen says the rate of default is now around 4.7%. At Lending Club, borrowers with poor credit are excluded and therefore interest rates are lower. The site has only been in operation since mid 2007, but as of now, Lending Club claims to have a 0% default rate and says that only a small fraction of borrowers–0.012% –have made late payments (30 days or more).

Maureen, you forgot to ask Chris how many loans are late. It can take months of zero payments for a late loan to be considered in default on Prosper.com. And with Lending Club you should have asked the average age of the loans. I mentioned this problem with Lending Club’s statistics in this post on loan rejections. LendingClub’s loans have not aged enough yet for people to actually rely on that late payment statistic for a basket of three-year loans.

What is the potential market for these loans? Analysts predict a huge surge in demand. Javelin Strategy & Research, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based financial services consulting firm, estimates that demand in the person-to-person lending market could hit $159 billion by 2012.

Forbes also put together a concise guide to the peer to peer lending sites.

FOX Business February 11, 2008: Bypassing the Bank:

Peter Barnes talks to Renaud Laplanche, Lending Club Founder & CEO, about LendingClub.com, a social networking website for peer-to-peer lending.

Time February 28, 2008: Hey, Buddy, Can You Spare $10,000?:

WHO DOES IT [p2p Lending]: Bernadette Lui of San Jose, Calif., has $3,125 spread among 13 three-year loans. She earns 14.6% and is considering reinvesting her returns with new borrowers. “They’re pretty small dollar amounts on each loan,” Lui says. “I figured it would be acceptable if someone defaulted.”

Bernadette Lui should have spread her money across more loans. In fact, should could have picked 62 loans rather than just 13. Considering that she on average loaned out $240 to each of 13 people, just one default will significantly impact her ROI.

Washington Times March 2nd 2008: Wanna Talk Money?. The article actually spends more time on sites such as Wesabe and Geezeo, but does include peer to peer lending:

Others have opted for niche sites. Some, such as Covestor.com, allow investors to see how their portfolios compare with others. Social lending sites, such as Lending Club and Prosper, bypass banks to match lenders with borrowers. Buxfer.com and BillMonk.com help roommates, friends and relatives keep logs of shared expenses. NetworthIQ helps people figure out in a public forum what they are worth in dollars…

Some people, such as Phyllis Wright, 48, are just looking for a way out of debt. The customer-services representative who lives in Clinton borrowed $9,000 from the Lending Club to pay off some of her credit cards. “I knew that I had so much debt that I didn’t even bother to try to get a loan from the bank because I knew I would have been turned down,” she said.

She got a 12 percent interest rate, much lower than the rate she had on her credit cards. She had been paying her credit cards about $450 a month. Now she pays Lending Club $301. She still has credit card debt, but “that was a big help,” she said.

Since September, when the Lending Club expanded from a Facebook group to a public Web site, it has issued about $9.5 million in loans, said Renaud Laplanche, founder and chief executive. Last month alone, it doled out about $3 million. Laplanche attributed the rapid growth to the credit crunch that has squeezed the mortgage market and seeped into other forms of lending.

Laplanche said borrowers must have a minimum 640 credit score, no more than a 30 percent debt-to-income ratio and no delinquencies. To minimize risk, lenders make small loans to each person. That way, if one recipient defaults, lenders are still likely to get a return from their investments in other people’s loans. So far, Laplanche said, fewer than 1 percent of all loans have been in default.

“People tend to not default on other people in a community if they feel connected,” he said.

I think Prosper may have already proven that last statement incorrect. I hardly ever lend on Lending Club or Prosper based upon some social or geographic connection, but when I do, I always let the borrower know — just in case Laplanche is correct.

ABC News April 5, 2008: Social Lending Networks, New Alternative to Banks:

There is a video of Murphy who received a 25,000 loan from Lending Club at 12% to fund his popcorn business. The lender Bernadette Lui (mentioned in the time article) is in the video and she mentions that two of her loans are already late. So her return is not going to be so attractive. The video mentions a different estimated ROI for Bernadette — over 15% — than the return mentioned in the Time article. So I was right… Bernadette should have spread her risk across more loans.

No single lender carries a full loan, so the risk is spread out among several people. The borrowers get a fixed rate, based on their credit score, which is usually a better rate than the bank would give and much better than they would get using a credit card.

Bernadette Liu has loaned out a total of $3,125, spread over 13 different borrowers. She’s earning almost 15 percent on her investment. She says that’s a lot better than the stock market or even bank CDs. But she said she is worried about two of her loans on which the borrowers are late making payments.

“It’s a newer venture, so you never know,” she said. “But I think my funds are diversified enough.”

When she says her funds are diversified enough, I wonder if she means just her Lending Club loans or her entire investment portfolio. If she is talking about her Lending Club loans alone, I think she is wrong. She could have invested her three grand across 62 loans at $25 each or 31 loans at $50. If you want to try P2P lending, please invest across more loans. See the articles at Prosper Lending Review and Rate Ladder on the subject of P2P loan diversification.

US NEWS April 8th 2008: Surviving the Crunch:

Ryan Feig, 35, founder of Zensah Performance Apparel, a Miami innovator of seamless compression sportswear. Projected 2008 sales: seven figures
“My experiences with banks have been extremely difficult—even though we sell to teams in the NBA, are a 3-year-old company, have great technology and have some of the greatest athletes. Lending Club [an online social lending network] has been a savior. It’s true capitalism for borrowing. Tomorrow, even if there is no more credit crunch, I think people are going to have better access to capital through people-to-people lending than, let’s say, a bank.”

CBS March 21, 2008: In Credit Crunch, Lending To Each Other:

At a time when credit is hard to come by, more Americans are turning to a new source for money: each other. It’s called person-to-person lending, and it’s expected to rise 800 percent in the next couple of years.

…He was paying 31 percent on his credit card. And now he’s paying …

“Ten percent,” Brown said.

…Those with some money like Clemens, and those who need some like Brown, are now able to get together on Web sites like LendingClub.com and Prosper.com.

Since CBS News first reported on Prosper.com a year ago the credit crisis has made person-to-person lending take off, nearly tripling Prosper’s customers to 630,000.

This article also includes a 2:35 minute video (after the advertisement):

Technorati Tags: P2P lending, credit, Prosper, Lending Club, GlobeFunder, Zopa, Virgin Money, news, roundup, borrowing money

• Glenn Chapman on P2P lending at Prosper, Virgin, Kiva and Zopa
• Rex Dixon: Social Media Director of Lending Club Blog
• Prosper.com Correlations: Late Loans and Interest Rate Caps
• Pennsylvania loans or what were early Prosper lenders thinking?
• One Year Review: My Prosper Lending Experience

This extends my posting on the blog roundup of Lending Club quiet period postings…

HollowOak asks: “How far behind is Prosper? Or do they get kudos for having started the SEC filing months ago?”

Lazy Man and Money is calling Lending Club dead:

I have been worked for a number of start-up companies and they had one thing in common – they are extremely fragile. A high percentage of new companies fail.. I’ve talked to a few other Lending Club members… and they said they are gone and never coming back. They feel their trust has been violated. With each day that Lending Club can’t or doesn’t say anything to justify this inactivity, the more trust is lost. I might be blowing this out of proportion, but I’d rather err to the side of being conservative until I have reason to believe otherwise.

LazyMan is correct that their inability to communicate this issue over the next few months (?) is going to hurt Lending Club. It was communicated poorly, so I can understand why many people must assume the worst.

ProsperousLand wondered why he took yesterday off in his catch up post today about Lending Club halting new lenders. Mike had posted previously about Prosper filing with the SEC. RateLadder also posted information on Prosper’s SEC filing. The key line from my perspective from the Prosper filing is:

Prosper intends to establish and maintain a secondary trading market online auction platform, or Resale Platform, pursuant to which lenders may seek to transfer borrower notes to other Prosper registered lenders.

Rate Ladder updated his posting on the quiet period notice to say that he no longer thinks that the filing is to create a secondary market. I speculate that he based this change on a one line quote at tech crunch attributed to a lawyer. I am guessing that she is probably just speculating the reasons like the rest of the world because there can be multiple reasons for a quiet period, but could she be right?

Jeff is feeling better after having the unfortunate event of having money arrive to Lending Club just after the notice came out.

Dough Roller also speculated about a secondary market.

Penny Saved posted “So much for Lending Club“:

I guess I will have to replace their banner on my sidebar with a gigantic “X”… Prosper was able to do this same process without having to stop lenders so … I would say that Lending Club has something else going on here… The reasons I liked them over Prosper were numerous, but I suppose I shall have to look into Prosper now.

My take is that chances are good this will kill them as a P2P lender because it is hard enough to build loyalty…

By the way, I was incorrect in my comment at the Amatureist Financial Journey post. The first comment said that they were turning in Lending Club to the BBB and wanted their money back. I don’t think receiving a refund on loans you already made is possible. Also, it would not be a good idea for Lending Club to do this because if word got out it could cause a run on the bank. Rob Garcia did respond and mentioned that he cannot comment on the filing or future speculation but that he could follow up on the commenter’s issue which would essentially be a customer service issue. In hindsight this seems obvious that Lending Club should be able to respond to customer service issues since a SEC quiet period is more about investors and investing – thus the hold in the lending side of the business.

—————–

On a similar SEC and P2P lending note, Bama says that he has filed a complaint with the SEC for selling him unregistered securities. He posted about his legal research recently that caused him to file the complaint.

Technorati Tags: Prosper Marketplace, Lending Club, quiet period, sec, roundup, peer lending, p2p lending

• Prosper Marketplace Enters Quiet Period
• Lending Club Quiet Period Burn Rate Update
• Lending Club Quiet Period: Is a Secondary Loan Market Coming?
• Requesting Advice on P2P Lending
• Lending Club Quiet Period Announcement: A Blog RoundUp

I have already commented on Lending Club’s quiet period and referral program suspension. I decided to check other blogs to see what they have to say on the email notice that went out today. Since I was reading everything anyway, I decided to post links and a few quotes to everything that I could find using Google’s Blog Search for Lending Club.

Peer-Lend commented on the uncertainty of the meaning of the communication:

There has been a large amount of speculation recently in many corners that the P2P Lending models might be subject to some legal uncertainty regarding whether the loans should be classified as securities… The speculation has primarily been concerned with who, in fact, owns the loans (notes), and how exactly that ownership [is transferred]….

It is unclear whether LendingClub has ceased operations as a result of an SEC action or whether LendingClub has chosen to bite the bullet and submit to regulation voluntarily. This event could have major repercussions…

The g-spot posted:

My guess is their legal team is burning the midnight oil. Anyone thinking of starting their own P2P lending marketplace may want to review this telling video from 2006 where Chris Larsen of Prosper talks about the effort they spent working with regulators…

What’s new in? blogged about Lending Club sorting out some legal issues:

While the company will not talk to media “until the registration process is completed,” we suspect that Lending Club is looking to obtain a broker-dealer license from the SEC that would legitimize its operations.

Rate Ladder mentions that he does not have much choice but to withdraw funds as they become available. He also lamented the closing of the referral program which I can understand if you see his screen shot showing how much was earning from referrals.

NetBanker posted some screen shots and a few links. Additionally, it seems he got a statement from Prosper.com about the Lending Club quiet period:

Person-to-person lending is an increasingly popular way for individuals to borrow and lend money at attractive interest rates. Understandably it must be done in a secure and trusted way. While we’re not in position to comment on another company’s regulatory stance, Prosper believes that…

– See the rest of the quote at NetBanker’s post on the topic.

I think this blog is jumping the gun in his assessment of the situation:

…it is no longer peer-to-peer lending… The whole idea behind P2P Lending is to keep the banks out of it… Now at Lending Club “lenders” will ensure the funding is provided, then the loans will be sold off to some institution… while the lender most certainly will not receive the full amount…

It destroys the whole “community” aspect of P2P lending…

CenterNetworks posted on the email:

Could the company be working towards an IPO? My guess is not and that this is a standard process to protect Lending Club as they grow. The term “quiet period” is being used and we hear this period could last as long as three months. I have an email into Lending Club to try to get more details.

Good luck on getting more information — it is called a quiet period for a reason. Update: I ran across a second post from CenterNetworks confirming that they received a “no comment” response from Lending Club.

The Bootstrap Economist commented at CenterNetworks that possibly banking regulators were not pleased with the Lending Club business model.

TechCrunch’s post mentions: “…we suspect that Lending Club is looking to obtain a broker-dealer license from the SEC that would legitimize its operations.”

Dividend Growth Investor wondered about the credibility of P2P lending companies overall in the comments at Brip Blap.

Jason at the Amatureist Financial Journey wishes that he would have received more notice and may not want to return to Lending Club when they come back.

I think of all the posts on the topic, Jason commented best — it seems like very poor communication to announce this so abruptly. Maybe due to regulation they had no choice about how quickly this was announced, but I wish they would have mentioned that in the email. It might have stopped some of this speculation. And now of course, Lending Club will not be able to correct this communication for three, four, or more months due to the quiet period.

Anyway, I am still hoping for the secondary loan market which would bring liquidity to the P2P lending market. We’ll find out sooner or possibly later, but in the mean time, I’ll be making my next transfer of funds to Prosper.com.

The Lending Club quiet period email was also blogged by Prosper Lending Review, by the Lending Club CEO (unfortunately comments were closed), and Saving for Home.

UPDATE: I added more blog links related to the Lending Club quiet period in a second blog post.

Technorati Tags: roundup, lending club, quiet period, p2p lending, banking, speculation, rumors

• More Lending Club Quiet Period Announcement Links
• Change in Lending Club Cash Burn Rate Due to Quiet Period
• Prosper Marketplace Update Targeted at “Lazy Man and Money”?
• Top Ten Referrers and Posts for the First Half of 2008
• More Website Updates Including Following Comments

Thanks to Prosper Lending Review for hosting P2P lending carnival number four. I entered carnivals one and two, but managed to miss number three.

For carnival number four, I entered my post: What were the early Prosper lenders thinking? I decided to select this post because of the interesting Prosper Marketplace history that came out in the comments, so thanks to everyone who commented.

By far, the most useful post of the P2P lending carnival was the one on Prosper Taxes by RateLadder.

DoughRoller had an interesting post on p2p interest rates. That one is very similar to one that I have in draft mode right now, but not so similar that my post will not be different.

I think that this was the first carnival post about Virgin Money which I have mentioned a few times including blogging about the lauch “Go Fund Yourslef!”

There were many other interesting articles and they can all be found at the p2p lending carnival host’s post.

• Submit for the next P2P Lending Carnival
• Carnival of Peer-to-Peer Lending #10
• Second Peer to Peer Lending Carnival
• First Peer-to-Peer Lending Carnival
• First Two Months Blogging P2P Lending

I participated in the second peer to peer lending carnival which is hosted at Brip Blap. There were too many good submissions to decide on a favorite post in this carnival, but I will post links and comments below to a few favorites. I submitted my article on Lending Club rejecting most loan applications.

Peer-Lend posted information on the new bidding guidance and interest rates. Moolanomy posted information about his second loan on Prosper. Prosper Lending Review interviewed the Fynanz CEO. (That one was interesting enough that I already blogged about it.) Rate Ladder updated the vintage curves.

WiseClerk make some P2P lending predictions for 2008. One of his predictions (listed at 75% probability) is that we will see insurance against p2p lending defaults. Dough Roller posts how he overcame his fear of p2p lending although he admits that he has not entirely overcome his concerns about lending on Prosper.

I am glad to see a post from a borrower. This time the post comes from Amanda who asks lenders how they would feel about financing a second prosper loan for her. The official Prosper Blog also posted some interesting and unusual tips for borrowers.

Money Smart Life posted an Introduction to P2P lending. It is a very basic introduction and more from the borrowers point of view. Also, I am not sure why Kiva is included in his list of sites since Kiva does not perform the functions he describes in the post. Kiva is for third world entrepreneurs. Kiva is not for people who want a lower interest rate or were rejected by their bank for a loan.

Here is my post on the first peer to peer lending carnival. Also, if you want to participate in the next peer to peer lending carnival, visit the carnival homepage.

• P2P Lending Carnival #4
• Carnival of Peer-to-Peer Lending #10
• First Peer-to-Peer Lending Carnival
• Submit for the next P2P Lending Carnival
• WSJ writes about P2P Lending

Thank you for reading my first two months of blogging P2P lending. During this time, I have written 37 articles on P2P lending as I have shared my experience and learnings about peer-to-peer lending.

I would like to thank all the bloggers who have linked to my posts and added me to their blog roll. P2P No Bank Aggregator (managed by Rate Ladder) has provided a some traffic and makes it easy to break into the P2P lending blogging scene and to keep up with other blogs. Lazy Man and Money also sent many users my direction with the first Peer to Peer Lending Carnival. My MicroFinance (link removed 3/5/2008 because blog now MIA) was the first to add my blog to his blog roll. Other blogs have followed such as Prosper Lending Review and I have received a few mentions in the official Lending Club Blog such as this announcement. Wise Clerk also linked to several of my posts. I am certain that I missed some more bloggers, but I cannot remember all the links at this time.

Bloggers also helped create the content for my most popular post to date “Advice for New Prosper and Lending Club Lenders.”

Also, thanks to Lending Club which has already paid out $175 in referral fees because borrowers or lenders signed up using my affiliate link (which has also paid each of the people who signed up a $25-50 starting account bonus.) Lending Club’s employees have also been generous with stopping by to comment on my posts which is very helpful to both me and the readers of this blog.

My Favorite Posts from the first few months:

My post on advice for new P2P Lenders compiled the advice of several bloggers based upon their experience in the P2P lending market. I also posted on my first Lending Club portfolio selection which generated a response from several Lending Club employees including the CEO. I also turned that portfolio selection into a Lending Club walk through video. I also noticed that Lending Club has been rejecting most loan applicants which generated many comments.

For fun, I asked readers to vote where I should invest my next $500, the investment poll results dictated I would invest my next $500 with Lending Club. I have already made that investment with Lending Club.

I have also blogged multiple times on the subprime mortgage crisis including borrowers paying their mortgage with payday loans and homeowners committing arson to avoid foreclosure. I also advised against borrowing money to lend. The risk is too great especially for new lenders.

I found that Zopa potentially offers the best interest rates since some borrowers are receiving negative interest rates. They can receive negative interest rates due to the help of lenders. Zopa is not the only site allowing charity lending. Kiva allows you to make loans to entrepreneurs in developing nations. MySpace CEO, Chris deWolfe, is obviously a supporter of the concept since he gave MySpace employees Kiva loan credits for Christmas presents.

On my other blog (that I seem to have little time for) I have posted two P2P lending articles including the five prerequisite investments to P2P lending including an emergency fund, 401K, a Roth IRA, etc and I also performed a basic tax impact analysis on P2P loans.

I found the post about Prosper removing criticisms and competitors from Wikipeidia interesting. I used the Wikipedia Scanner to find all the changes made to Wikipedia pages from Prosper Marketplace IP addresses. The changes included removing large sections of criticism and removing a mention of a competitor. However, I still plan to invest in some Prosper loans.

Thank you also to all my readers. Don’t forget to sign up for the RSS feed.

• Requesting Advice on P2P Lending
• Investment in Prosper Loans – My Next $500
• Advice for Potential a New Peer-to-Peer Lender
• P2P Lending: Everyone is Watching
• Top Ten Referrers and Posts for the First Half of 2008