Peer-to-Peer Lending

I came across this blog here about a site called Lending Club. Basically, you loan money to individual people and get a high interest rate on it. The minimum to invest is $25.

The link I used from that blog allowed me to get $25 for opening an account. Not bad. I'll get $25 to play around with. Just a word of warning though, when you enter your checking account information, they don't tell you until afterwords that they are going to be initiating a small withdrawal (under $1) to make sure you own the account. Every other place I've seen always makes a deposit, not a withdrawal. You can also add money to your account via a credit card (through paypal) or just use your paypal account (it appears this is only for the first time). I added an additional $25.

There are a variety of loans to choose from, and you can view the individual details of each one, including information such as the intended use of the loan, their credit score, income, etc. The interest rates range from 8% to 17%.

You can even sell your notes on their trading platform (though I don't think there is tremendous liquidity here).

I don't think I would invest a ton of money here, but I'll see what happens with the money I put in. If I were to decide to put more money in, I would split them up over several loans as do spread out the risk of default.