Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Prosper referral program ends

Since announcing their referral program one year ago, Prosper has grown from about 300,000 members to nearly 800,000. Under the bonus program, both the referring lender and the new lender received $25. Over the last year the program has been modified several times. In addition, the program has been extended past several deadlines. According to Brad Prescott, Prosper's Director of Marketing, existing referral links will not generate referral payments for referrals that occur after 11:59PM PST on June 30, 2008.

Those that signed up prior to June 30th will still receive the $25 bonus when they fund their first loan. Prosper is expected to announce a new referral program this month with the goal of working directly with a few dozen, quality referral partners as opposed to hundreds of partners operating under a "one size fits all" approach.

Referral programs have been used by most peer to peer lending companies to grow their user base.
Although Prosper has announced that their referral program ended on June 30th, I received an email confirmation for a new referral generated on July 1st. This is no different than email confirmations generated prior to the end of the program and confirms a bonus will be generated if the new user becomes an active participant in the marketplace within the next 90 days. The Prosper referral page is unchanged and still allows you to invite friends with the same wording indicating a bonus will be awarded. Despite the deadline, perhaps it is not too late to sign up for the bonus. Prosper would be unwise to terminate awards until they make clear changes on their website, stop sending bonus confirmation emails and stop serving $25 bonus advertisements.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I guess Prosper listened to you and updated their referral page:

When does the referral program end?

We have no anticipated end date to this program, however, we may from time to time update the program.

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