Prosper Lending: A Beginner's Guide to Successful Bidding

I recently completed my first 3 loans on Prosper. The process itself was easy, but actually winning my first bid took me several attempts. I almost became frustrated until I better understood how the process works. Now that I realize how simple the process is, I plan on lending more money.

How to Bid on a Prosper Loan

Bidding on a Prosper loan is very easy to do. Just follow these two steps:

1. Select a loan: There are two options for selecting your loans.

2. Bid on a loan:

If you chose to use the Portfolio Plan, Prosper will automatically select a loan for you from within the Portfolio Plan you selected. You don’t get to choose the person you lend to, and your loan may go to anyone within the range of credit risks for that particular plan. This method is less flexible, but it is the easiest. The process only takes a few minutes to find a match, and you will get an e-mail notification of which loan you are bidding on. If you have a winning bid, you see the bid listed as a loan on your account overview page.

When you choose to manually select a loan you researched, then you bid by clicking on the “Bid Now” button. You can’t miss it. You select the amount you wish to bid (minimum of $50) and the lowest rate you are willing to accept to fund the loan. Then you enter, confirm, and wait until you find out if you have the winning bid or not.

I lost out on funding the first few loans I attempted to fund because I did not understand lenders had to enter the lowest rate they are willing to accept. The process is set up in an auction format, much like Ebay. The only difference is that there are multiple bidders for the same piece of pie, and you are bidding down instead of up. If a loan is 100% funded and still has time remaining before the auction ends, there is a good possibility the loan rate will be bid lower. This is what happened to me. This is a great advantage for the borrower because people are essentially giving them a discount by bidding lower.

There is one other feature of note: when bidding on a loan, be aware of Prosper’s Automatic Funding feature, which is like the “buy it now” feature in Ebay. Once the loan is 100% funded, the auction automatically ends, and no one else can bid the rates lower. These loans are usually requested by borrowers who need the funds in a hurry.

I missed out on two loans I really wanted to fund because I didn’t fully understand the bidding process – but now that I understand how it works – it’s game on!

My experience with lending on Prosper

I currently have 3 loans with Prosper at $50 each. The average interest rate of these three loans is 13.7%, which is very good considering most high interest bank accounts are sitting in the mid 3% range after the recent cuts by the fed. I understand there are risks to lending this money to people I do not know. But, each loan is in a $50 increment and is spread among 3 people. $150 at 13% will not make me rich, but it is a better return than 3% in a bank account. On the flip side, if I lose money, the most I can lose at any one time is $50.

I plan on adding additional funds to my Prosper account as time and money allow. In fact, I currently have $125 in my Prosper account waiting to fund some more loans. My plan is to reinvest my Prosper earnings into new loans. The process will take some time, but I eventually hope to have a nice source of alternative income.

Is prosper the only option? There is a similar Peer to Peer Lending company for both borrowers and investors, called Lending Club. Here is my Lending Club review.