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.

The next p2p lending carnival will be hosted here at Personal Loan Portfolio. There are not a large number of submissions that have been received to date, so you have a great chance of being prominently featured in the carnival. If you have recently written about Lending Club, Prosper Marketplace, Fynanz, or other P2P lending services, consider submitting your article.

To submit an article, go to Read the rest of this entry »

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 Read the rest of this entry »

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) Read the rest of this entry »

Lazy Man and Money posted the first P2P Lending Blog Carnival. I am excited that he mentioned my post on Lending Advice for New Lenders as his favorite. Despite my article being Lazy Man’s favorite, it did not make the list on the Official Prosper Blog coverage of the carnival.

My personal favorite blog posting from the Carnival was the 2007 summary of P2P lending. It is a concise summary of many recent events in the person-to-person lending marketplace.

Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme had a thoughtful post on why P2P lending with Prosper did not work out as he intended. Here is a quote from his post:

Most borrowers are good people. It is the remaining 10% that ruins it for everyone else… it is very difficult to predict who will break or keep their promises. I now understand why credit card companies and payday loan companies charge exorbitantly high interest rates… It is to cover their default rates and the high interest rate should basically be thought of as an insurance premium rather than a profit. If there was a better way to weed out the bad borrowers, the rest of us could enjoy loans at the prime rate.

RateLadder posted new Prosper Vintage Curves. He posted previously an explanation of vintage curves if the graph leaves you scratching your head.

I was also glad to hear from a borrower Read the rest of this entry »