P2P-Banking.com

I think most of you will agree that Prosper is a wonderful concept and has tremendous potential! Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be reading this (is anyone reading this?).

But Prosper’s approach has a fundamental flaw: They have cherry-picked states to license in as a means to keep costs down.

That creates two problems:
1) Lack of consistency across the various States, which leads to borrower confusion.
2) Lack of growth opportunities.

Publicity is a great thing! It draws attention and gets people excited. I’m sure Chris Larsen has done a thousand interviews by now. Local, national and international news programs. I’ve read about Prosper in no less than then major print publications. The buzz is there!

But many potential borrowers are left wondering why they cannot have access to this wonderful tool. Some are so severely rate-capped that they list and relist without so much as a bid. They are helpless and they leave frustrated. What business wants people leaving with that?

Currently, Prosper can only grow through increased market share. While I’m confident that they have a product that is capable of such, they are leaving a lot on the table. By opening up in the other States and removing the rate-caps in the rest, they could expand their market significantly. Effectively, grow wider and deeper.

It is time for Prosper to go National! It is time for them to abandon the State-by-State licensing strategy and give Prosper members (and future Prosper members) a consistent platform to grow. I hope you’ll join me in my quest to get Prosper moving on this issue. Please visit www.baldeagleloans.com/nevada.html for details on how you can help.

With the click of a mouse late Thursday night March 1, 2007, the leader of the Two Millionaires Group on Prosper.com admitted the 5,509th member and created the largest group on Prosper ever! The one remaining challenge at the time was to beat PsychDoc's record number of loans created….

Asked about how his group succeeded in growing so large so rapidly, "TwoMillionaires1" the group leader replied that he did a lot of internet marketing in the beginning to bring new members in, and it grew from there to the point where today word of mouth from contented borrowers brings in probably hundreds of new members each week.

 "It didn't hurt either to have a private website that has attracted more than 300,000 hits and 10,000 unique visitors," the group leader added.

An upcoming press release is likely to bring in a huge influx of new members over the next few weeks.

As of the date of this report, more than one and a half million dollars has been loaned to members of this popular people-to-people online borrowing and lending group, almost 400 individual loans.

Details are available at:

http://www.prosper.com

and

http://www.2mils.org

Okay, toot toot!

I was recently featured on a Las Vegas news program. I couldn't be more pleased with the production. Here is the link: http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=6109198

If you click on the small camera icon under the title and date, you'll see the program that has aired twice here. Now, if only Prosper had a license here!

All things have a learning curve…

I’m learning that as a Group Leader on Prosper, even when you think you’ve worked through that curve, you probably haven’t. I, like many Group Leaders, have had my good news and my bad news.

Bad News
My first group loan has gone late. But worse than that, without any notice to me as a Group Leader, they reversed payments that had already been made. Apparently they can do that. Now she shows two months late.

I’ve passed emails with her over the past couple of weeks. She is showing a strong conviction to get caught up when she can. But it will be a while.

I have my rank now, but not too cool to be one star. I hope she does catch up soon!

Good News
We just closed our fourth group loan. YourAverageJane blew my wildest expectations with her listing. A last minute surge dropped her to 11% (and she is a clean D). Amazing! I’m so happy for her and glad I made enough low bids to ensure I was on this loan no matter what.

I am working with a new borrower who may be ready to list as early as Monday. Another clean D. Stay tuned!

BaldEagle

I am the Group Leader of Virtual Lending Group and recently received an email from Kori, one of my Group Members that I would like to share. Kori is a young lady who came to Prosper for an auto loan because she had no credit history and was having difficulty obtaining a loan through conventional lending institutions. She needed a vehicle in order to pursue her career teaching baton classes at different schools:

Kori’s Email:

Hey, How are things going?!?! Everything is FINALLY falling into place for me. The after school coordinator and the budget advisor have approved my classes, now I am getting finger printed. The board signs my paperwork on Feb 13th and then I am starting a 17 week program at $600 a week. I am going to be making $40 an hr, 3 different schools a day, and five days a week. The contract is for $10,200 for only 4 months of work!!! I am so excited! My boyfriend has his business up and it is growing as well. We are planning on using Prosper in 6 months to a year for loan to purchase a home. I’m only 20 right now, by the time I am 21 in June things will be looking so much better!!! I am also competing in 2008 in the Baton Twirling World Championships. I will keep you informed on everything that is happening! Thanks you for the help. The car loan really has kick started my entire life! It is insane! TTYL!
Kori

Wow! hard to believe Prosper will be 1 year old in a few days. It has been such a great opportunity to both borrowers and lenders to navigate through the first public 365 days.

As the group leader for NuBeginnings I’ve seen the group trends change just about every three months. You had your groups who came in and brought in many borrowers, groups consisting of only friends and groups who focused on niche borrowers.

As for NuBeginnings from May 3,2006 to today we have 309 members. How did I get that many members? Through word of mouth, basically I have lenders who believe and support NuBeginnings. I also ask for referrals from a borrower once they’ve funded.

Loan count from Nubeginnings is 55 with over $450,000.00 in closed loans. Two loans are pending verification and 1 is on a bid down. Bid downs are amazing and a rampant comment I’ve seen on the forums is “How low will it go”

The forums on Prosper have evolved I try to stay away from the RLM, love reading the lenders forum and along the way I have found I miss some of the original posters. They were lenders so were very active. Hope to see them back.

A new forum has popped up and I love the format prospers.org like wiseclerks site, was built and is monitoered by a prosper member. There are many great minds amongst Prosper members, and I am constanty learning new things. Love it!

Wiseclerks site is full of stats and information for lenders, and now I think it’s great he’s offering this news site.

So while I hope that Prosper members see this I hope we have new visitors because of this site.

I will continue to add new loans for lenders and have my sights on a new dollar goal this year. My leads are starting come in from some feelers I put out, so I’m looking to put up solid loans.

Bev