Free $25.00 and a Chance at an Infinite Return!

I've talked in the past couple of weeks about venturing into the world of social lending and so far, so good. I've got $500.00 in loans over at Prosper.com and my average rate of return is over 16%. I'll let you know if anything starts going south and people start defaulting.

Today's deal comes from Prosper's main competitor - LendingClub.com. LendingClub is offering a promotion of $25.00 for opening a new account. The site operates much the same way as Prosper - people can lend and borrow money from each other rather than through a bank. It gives lenders a chance to get better returns and borrowers a chance to get more favorable terms than they might get elsewhere. LendingClub's special deal is an effort to get more people borrowing and lending. Here's how to take advantage of the deal:

1. Go to LendingClub.com and sign up to open an account and become a lender.
2. After entering some basic information about yourself, LendingClub will send you an email to verify your account.
3. After verifying your account with the link they send in your email, go back to LendingClub.com, log in, and enter your bank account information on the Bank Account page.
4. In the next couple of days, LendingClub will either add a few cents to your account or take a few cents from your account and you will need to go back to LendingClub and verify the amounts added/taken away (usually it's like two 15 cent credits/debits). This is how financial sites verify that you are the owner of the bank account that you listed and is standard for online financial sites - nothing to worry about!
5. Once your bank account is verified, fund your LendingClub account with $1.00.

That's all there is to it. The promotion states that new accounts that are funded with $1-$999 are eligible for the $25.00 promotion. The site will credit your account within a week of the $1.00 going into your account. Free money!

Now - you could stop there if you just want to get the cash. But - if you're willing to actually fund a loan on the site, you have a chance for an INFINITE return (you invested $0 and any amount that you get in return would equal an infinite return!). LendingClub allows lenders to fund loans in $25.00 increments (Prosper requires $50.00 increments) - so if you want to try to get more than the free $25.00, turn around and lend out that $25.00. You get to shop around and find a loan that you're interested in making based on the proposed interest rate, borrower information, etc. Lend that money out and give the site a test drive. It costs you nothing and offers the rare chance of getting an unbelievable rate of return!

By the way - I realize that you actually invested $1.00 (not $0) - but as soon as the promotional funds hit your account, you can transfer that $1.00 back to yourself - so you really have not invested anything at all!