anybody here investing at prosper.com ?

[ima_sinnic]

I've decided to put small amounts into loans to people ($25 here and there out of each paycheck) but am not entirely confident of the bidding process. Since these are small amounts of money, I'm willing to take a risk and loan to the lower-rated borrowers to get a bigger return (I'm looking especially at the smallest loans, totaling $1000, which would have the smallest repayment amounts, so reneging might be less likely), but how do I know, really, how much interest to bid?

One I'm looking at is for startup advertising for an Internet business, with "Bid yield" shown as 34% (though I know that, for some reason I don't understand, yield would actually be more like 16%). Correct that the other bidders' "bid yield" is not actually the amount they bid?

I haven't found their "tutorials" all that helpful. On the question of how much to bid, they just say to bid lower if I find myself constantly being refused, or something like that.

Would be interested in hearing others' experiences and strategies with this. I just looked at the Investors Group, but it does not appear very active, with few comments, and the last one on April 21.