experiment 3: prosper revisited

so, i've "invested" about $2,000 into prosper so far and am earning a decent return -- 12.91%. while that is far better than something that i could earn in a cd or savings account, it is not without risk. to me, this is a decent place to park some cash, if you've got some that you can be a little riskier with, but it is definitely not a liquid investment.

experiment 5: reverse funnel system

do a search on google for how to make money online and one of the first ads that comes up is for the 'reverse funnel system'. it's a $50 investment that allegedly will teach you the methods to:

shovel truckloads of cash off the Internet
have HUGE profit lines
create at least 7 ready-to-go streams of income
automate your business
generate over $1,000 pure profit within your first 48 hours
make big money while you sleep
generate revenue 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year

it sure sounds like a scam to me, but i'm willing to throw my money in to see what happens and i'll share it here.

experiment 3: prosper revisited

i have initiated a transfer to my prosper account and used their portfolio plan to see how it works. i took a pretty middle of the road approach and went with their balanced portfolio plan. this allows you to have your loan divided up against multiple borrowers, so that if someone defaults, it's not your whole loan amount at stake.

the whole process took about 5 minutes.

i'll update with progress and returns once the votes are in!

experiment 4: free gift card offer

you've seen the popups for free iphones, xboxes and gift cards. maybe you've even clicked them and found yourself lost in a sea of popups and figured it was some scam. well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. i found a promising post that is basically a how to guide on how these things work and how to get them to pay off:

http://bloggingcents.com/2007/11/19/freegiftoffers/

i'm going to give it a shot and see if i can get a $1,000 gift card. if i can, then all i have to do is repeart 1,000 times and that'll take me to the $1,000,000 mark, right?

experiment 3: prosper

i opened up a prosper account in an effort to see if i can make some money online lending money out. prosper is a person-to-person lending site that allows you to either borrow or lend money. they handle the payments and credit checks and pretty much everything. you basically pick your level of risk and set your interest rate. the concept is that if there is a more personal relationship between the lender and the borrower that would result in lower defaults. i don't know if i believe that or not, but it does look like there is some room to make a decent enough return.

i'm going to lend a small bit of side money now, but what interests me with this setup is that i could actually borrow money on prosper (or somewhere else) at a fairly low rate and lend it out at a higher rate -- an arbitrage play. this leverage would enable you to lend out much more than the money you have on hand. of course, you'd have to have a good credit score for this to work *and* you'd have to be pretty savvy in determining risk / rates / and really become an expert in the loan business.

experiment 2: affiliate programs

today i'm going to explore the world of affiliate marketing. affiliate marketing is a mechanism by which you direct customers to another website and you get essentially a commission for sales on that website. for example, if i were an amazon affiliate and you clicked on a link on my site to get to amazon and made a purchase, i'd get some percentage of the sale.

so, i'm going to sign up for a few of these and chart the progress. first up, you guessed it -- amazon.

1. amazon.com. it was really easy to sign up for their affiliate program. i just had to sign into my amazon account and fill out a very short app, which included giving some data about my site. as you can see, i've already linked to amazon using the affiliate link. the way it works is that they provide a unique id that tells them who referred the visitor in. if that results in a sale, you get a commission. actually, it even works if you use the link yourself, so at worst it's a way to save some money when you buy from them.
2. ebay.com. the signup process was a bit more complicated. they outsource their program through a site called commission junction. it's not as finely tuned as amazon, but it didn't take much effort, either.
   
3. commission junction. since i had to sign up for commission junction anyway, i figured i'd take a look at it. it's a affiliate network, so it sort of sits between an affiliate and a seller and links the two up. they make it easy to sign up with a number of sellers, so you can tailor your ads to line up with your site. but, their site is really, really slow. i almost gave up a few times. i signed up with capitol one, equifax, citibank, ing direct, and lendingtree, but all but equifax and lendingtree have a manual approval process.
   

experiment 1: adsense

it seems like there are a number of ways to monetize your web traffic these days and one of the easiest is google's adsense -- it's an ad serving platform that will put up ads on your blog. it's really easy to use, especially with a platform like blogger, since all you basically have to do is click and you've got ads.

of course, just because you're serving up ads doesn't mean that you're making money. how you make money is you get people to look at those ads, or better yet, click on them. now, there are some provisions that state that you cannot encourage your visitors to click the ads by asking them to, so, what you have to do is drive people to your site. that isn't an easy task, but let the experiment begin!