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[onthefence]

So I was checking out the differences in advertised APR.  Since prosper does not seem to be doing much advertising these days, I checked in on EricsCC.com since I know he keeps a copy of the advertisement up for the referral program.

Specifically this Advertisement:


This time I decided to click on the advertisement to see their qualifications flagged by the "*" to see if they had made any recent changes.

The link on EricsCC.com website links is http://www.prosper.com/prm/lender5.htm?s=ecc

You will note that this link now goes to a "Page Not Found" page & then redirects to a generic overview page.

So how is EricsCC.com going to get payments for referrals if the process is broken? 
Is it an old ad that they no longer support? 
Did prosper make changes to their referral program?

A check to the referral program link http://www.prosper.com/help/topics/account-referrals.aspx shows that a referral program still exists.  But they no longer have helpful links for people to put up advertisements on their blog.  They only helpful links left available are for you to e-mail your friends with prosper advertisements.

So when did the Ad based web referrals die?  Did they even tell EricsCC.com this?

Fortunately, prosper keeps a history to changes in their referral program on this link:
http://www.prosper.com/help/topics/account-referrals-history.aspx

History of Referral Program Changes

Date    Changes
Feb-22-2008    
    * Borrower referral award: $50 to referrer upon new borrower's successful first monthly payment

Dec-19-2007    
    * Borrower referral award: $35 to referrer upon new borrower's successful first monthly payment

Jun-6-2007
Program begins
    * Borrower referral award: 0.5% of borrower's loan amount to referrer upon successful first monthly payment
    * Lender referral award: $25 to referrer, $25 to new lender upon funding of new lender's first loan

I see nothing about dropping the advertisement based referral program in lue of a 'e-mail your friends only' program.

Does EricsCC.com know this?  He still has a broken ad for the program up that I suspect he thinks is still earning him money.

Could this be a drastic stealth change by prosper to cut costs?
Or was this a step to quietly axe all prosper advertisements put out by their Marketing department that may put them in a legally liable position for misleading lenders?

Lobby worthy? Y/N?

[Mark12547]

Do we have a second for The Lobby?

[jmathree]

I'll second it for the lobby.

[ira01]

There was a recent discussion about the referral issues here -- http://www.prospers.org/forum/brand_new_lender_and_im_already_getting_screwed-t8876.0.html

[zcommodore]

In late June, I got an e-mail from Prosper saying they were ending their referral program.  A month or two later, I was poking around on their site and noticed that there is still a referral program.  I was curious so I sent a message to customer service.  The response I got was a bit cryptic:

The referral program is still active. However, the affiliate program has been canceled. You can still refer people to Prosper and get the referral reward.

I gathered from this you can get rewards if you send an invitation to a friend via e-mail and they sign up based on that e-mail.  Beyond that, I'm not sure you can get referral rewards like from advertising.

If there's more information in the aforementioned discussion, I haven't read it, just FYI.

[jmathree]

Soon after the referral program ended, I saw the following line on this page.

Are you an online marketer interested in promoting Prosper? Please contact us at referralprogram@prosper.com.

I contacted them and received the following reply on 7/14/08.

Hi John,

Thanks for the prompt reply. Glad to hear you are interested.

The new program is one designed to provide maximum flexibility. Our goal is to work directly with a few dozen, quality referral partners as opposed to hundreds of partners operating under a "one size fits all" approach.  As such, we want to establish direct, custom deals with each partner that provide the optimal referral volume for Prosper and also the optimal ROI for the referral partner. 

As such, please email me the following information about your site:

Web site URL:
Traffic Volume per month:
Where you suggest placing Prosper ad creative on your site:

I will review the info with our marketing team and get back to you in the next few weeks with ideas about how we can best work together.

Thanks in advance. -Brad

I never followed up because I doubt my sites have the traffic to interest them.

[epetroel]

I'll reply to clear this up a bit (at least for my part).  As far as I know, the Prosper referral program has ended, although it does seem like I've gotten a few "new referral" messages from time to time over the last couple months.  They may have been just old ones though who clicked through back in the day but waited until recently to actually sign up.

Currently, Prosper is just paying me a monthly fee for the ad spot I have on the site (much like the Loanio ad I have there as well).  I wasn't aware that the link was broken and redirected though.  They gave me that link a while back, but never sent me a new one to use, so I haven't changed it.

So, I am still getting paid for it, just not on a per-referral basis like before.

I do get the feeling that they might be thinking about re-starting the referral program though too.  I received an e-mail a week or so ago to participate in an online survey about how the referral payouts should work.  I'm sure some of you who participated in the referral program got that as well.  If they are sending out surveys about it, that makes me think they might be interested in starting it back up.  Or maybe referrals will only be via e-mail invites and not via web-based ads anymore?