Marketing

Half percent more interest at Lendingclub

wiseclerk

Today for all new loans the interest rates at Lendingclub.com increase by 0.5 percent. At Lendingclub, unlike other p2p lending sites, the platform not the borrower sets the interest rate (based on credit grade). The increase was in reaction to rising borrower demand after Lendingclub eliminated state loan rate caps last week by going nationwide.

As a lender you can profit furthermore from two current promotions at Lendingclub. You get a 5% cash bonus if you lend 5,000 US$ or more by Feb. 3, 2008 (max. 20,000 per lender). Plus you get a 25 US$ signup bonus, if you sign up through this referral link.

Questions? Suggestions? Use the Lendingclub forum.

Prosper starts blog

wiseclerk

With several posts by CEO Chris Larsen Prosper.com starts blogging.

Welcome to the new Prosper Blog.

We’ll be using this blog to create a place to find up-to-the-minute news on the latest Prosper enhancements, enlightening and thoughtful Personal Finance opinions, touching Prosper Member Stories, and more. Your contributions are welcome. Please feel free to submit comments to any of the blog posts or send new articles and ideas to us at blog @ prosper.com (please remove spaces before using this email address) or submit a guest post.

We’ll be adding in posts regularly, so please stop back in again soon.

Warmly,

Prosper

The blog has been in preparation for some time. I believe we can look forward to some interesting articles by Prosper staff, borrowers, lenders and other guest writers.

Microplace advertising at Technorati

wiseclerk

I noticed prominently displayed Microplace ads on Technorati.com today. Not sure if it is really keyword-targeted or rather context targeted. When I did searches on Technorati on Globefunder or Kiva I was shown Microplace ads.

Technorati is an interesting choice for the campaign (if it runs only there – I did not check). Technorati is mainly used by bloggers and journalists. The ads would therefore target not the individual investor but the multiplier who might write about Microplace.
I noted that the ad display is NOT using geotargeting meaning it is not only shown to US residents but to viewer worldwide (only US residents can use Microplace at the moment).


(Sample screenshot after search for globefunder)


(Another sample ad, original is larger and flash animated)

MyC4 lender headcount doubles after national TV coverage

wiseclerk

After MyC4.com was featured on Danish national TV in a 15 minute feature many new lenders signed up. Within 3 days lender count rose from about 500 to currently 964. At MyC4 lenders (called investors) loan money to African entrepreneurs. The bidding frency of new lenders did lower closing interest rate dramatically. Loans now closed at 2 to 3 percent lender interest rate (previously usually 10 to 12 percent). MyC4 will now have to increase the number of listings, otherwise they might be temporably be sold out like happened to Kiva.
Yesterday the first loan listings from Ivory Coast went online.


 

Smava affiliate program launch

wiseclerk

Last week at the end of my post on the Prosper referral program I suggested:

The next step for even more growth

Currently all referral programs mentioned above have one thing in common. They are open only to existing members of the p2p lending services. Assuming they are successful and the p2p lending serves are seeking opportunities to enable even faster growth then the next step could be to start an affiliate program through networks like Zanox, CJ or Affilinet.

And today German Smava.de has launched an affiliate program through Affilinet. Though probably not a result of my blog post (or is it?), it is nice to see the development headed in the direction I anticipated.

The Smava affiliate program pays 15 Euro for each referred borrower that creates a listing and 10 Euro for each referred lender (who completes process of opening an account).

(Source: p2p-kredite.com)