If you’re looking for an alternative investment vehicle than stocks, bonds and real estate, becoming a lender with Lending Club, Prosper or another peer-to-peer lending site can be a great way to diversify your portfolio. Many successful lenders have averaged interest rates of over 12% since the industry gained prominence in the investment world.
Being successful with Lending Club, Prosper or any peer-to-peer loan site takes some effort and some research to identify which loans are likely to perform well and which loans should remain unfunded. It’s good to start out small and practice some basic Lending Club investment strategies with a few loans to get a good understanding of how becoming an investor works.
Fortunately, Lending Club is offering a $25.00 deposit bonus for anyone who registers for an account and is referred to by an existing Lending Club customer that can provide a special link. Since some members of the American Banking News staff are also Lending Club investors, we would be happy to refer you. Simply follow this link, register for an account, and you’ll get $25.00 deposited to your account. (Since we’ll be referring you, we’ll get $25.00 as well that we’ll re-invest back into the development of this site to provide our readership even more quality content.)
Using Lending Club and other peer-to-peer investment sites is almost an entirely new asset class. It’s definitely worth experimenting with as a small part of your investment portfolio to start out with and potentially worth a lot more if you want to invest some time into it.
[Update 1/26/2010: This bonus has expired.]
