8 ways to win at Prosper

Its too often I'm reading a blog of someone who mentions they know nothing about Prosper. In the beginning, I knew nothing as well and I funded an 'E' rated loan. I found the listing by browsing the forum boards and found out this guy was pretty active there. I figured that if he is active in the forums, he must be active in repaying his loan. Well that is a backwards way of thinking over at Prosper. Anyway, if you are trying to get into Prosper, here are some red flags I've come across while reading, looking at ericscc.com, and general experience with the site. I wish someone had given me this list as I was starting out.

• Never bid on HR, E, NC rated loans. Most of these people have this credit rating for a reason, and if you can figure out how to tell which ones legitimately have a chance of fixing their credit score then please tell me how!
• Don't bid on loans higher than 19,999. Prosper's maximum bid is $25k, so obviously they need as much money as they can get. This is probably a fishy deal. Look for reasons they need the money.
  
• Looks for signs of unemployment. Prosper will tell you the industry they are in and how much they make. Usually someone who makes less than $50,000 a year can't afford to make monthly payments of $1000.
• Don't bid on real estate loans. This is just a guess, because the housing market seems to be slowing down quite a bit nation wide. I bet now that the boom is busting, a lot of smart people got stuck with loans they can't afford and will end up losing money. You don't want the losing your money.
  
• Avoid business ventures. I think I read somewhere that 9/10 business startups fail. In my experience, people who start a business think they can pass the risk of a new business to the lender. I'm thinking this works well in the VC and angel investor world, but not so well for Prosper.
• Don't bid if they have ANY delinquencies. If you must bid on someone with current delinquencies, make sure they at least explain them. I would bet a lot of people don't understand that getting $10,000 to extend half of their debt isn't going to help them unless they, can afford the payments, can create a savings buffer, AND THEY CUT UP THEIR CARDS. The best consolidators to bid on are the ones that show you how much they owe on each payment, show you that they are better off with this new interest rate, and show you that by getting a prosper loan to pay off their cards, they are actually lowering their monthly expenses.
  
• Know when to walk away. Just like in poker its easy to get distracted by big winnings. Ignoring the odds in favor of getting a higher return is an easy mistake to make. I've bid on some loans that in hindsight make me want to cry. Not surprisingly, these are the ones that are now late.
• Poach. I'm really shooting myself in the foot here by telling you this, but I needed one more point to make a top ten list. Go to Ericscc and look at the Top Diversified Lenders by ROI you'll see a nice list of people who are already winning at Prosper. Pick a few of the top names on the list and view the bids that they put the most money on. At the time I'm writing this I'm number 99 on the list, but that's just the experian ROI. Ericscc and Lendingstats both compute their own ROI's and they list me higher than some of the guys at the top of the list. You might see me getting a 15% expected ROI and say to yourself, 'I'll be happy if I get 14%. Thats still better than the stock market historically and better than most do on Prosper! I'll let him do the work of scouting the loans and I'll reap the rewards! Heck, I might even spend a little time evaluating his loans and get an even higher ROI!!' So now here I am getting constantly underbid for the bids I make, especially the ones that I have the most confidence in!
  

The first thing I look for is no red flags, which seems to be getting harder to find nowadays(at an interesting rate). The second thing I look for is one or two red flags and an explanation of how they expect to get out of debt or pay off the loan.