Prosper and Economic Downturns

Prosper can be a decent choice even now, during the COVID-19 situation. Economic downturns are difficult – but you can get through them with financing from a peer to peer lender like Prosper.

A Prosper Bank Review for Economic Downturns

This online lender is one of several online lending companies out there. In our Prosper loans reviews, we look at just what sets this online lender apart from the others. It’s important to make your best decision during economic downturns.

They offer personal loans for business use. However, it seems as if applications for business loans always went to their partner, OnDeck (https://www.ondeck.com/), regardless of personal credit rating or amount of credit requested. We look at the specifics and drill down into the details with respect to this company.

Recession Period Financing

The number of American financial institutions as well as thrifts has been decreasing progressively for a quarter of a century. This is coming from consolidation in the marketplace in addition to deregulation in the 1990s, minimizing barriers to interstate banking. See: https://www.fundera.com/blog/happened-americas-small-businesses-financial-crisis-six-years-start-crisis-look-back-10-charts 

Assets concentrated in ever‐larger financial institutions is problematic for local business proprietors. Big banks are a lot less likely to make small loans. Economic slumps imply banks end up being much more cautious with lending. Luckily, business credit does not count on financial institutions.

Background

The company is located online here. Their physical address is:

Prosper Funding LLC
221 Main Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94105.

You can call them at: (866) 615-6319. Get in touch with them via their contact page.

Code of Ethics and Business Conduct

They abide by a Code of Ethics and Business Conduct. 

The main thrust of the Code is to support standard disclosures of conflicts of interests.

Employees have restricted access to company loans, in order to make it harder to exploit inside information. This is somewhat similar to the SEC’s insider trading rules for publicly traded corporations.

The Code also means their employees cannot accept substantial gifts.

However, this may be to deter overly enthusiastic but well-meaning clients who have a hard time taking no for an answer. With the Code, the company can be the ‘bad guy’.

The Code also specifically protects whistle blowers in case an employee witnesses and reports wrongdoing to management.

Prosper Personal Loans for Business Use During Economic Downturns

From $2,000 – 35,000 is available but be sure to do your own Prosper personal loans review. They will check your personal credit score. But there is no information on a Prosper loan minimum credit score. Rates are “low” yet otherwise unspecified. For a Prosper personal loan, the company offers a fixed term of 3 or 5 years. You have a single monthly payment. There is no information on Prosper personal loan rates.  So beware during economic downturns.

The Prosper Credit Score

Per their prospectus, the company calculates a score for borrowers, “… calculated using the historical performance of previous Borrower Loans with similar characteristics”. The score is based on data from Experian.

The Score predicts the probability of a loan going “bad”, e. g. going more than 60 days past due within twelve months of the application date. The score works as the foundation of Prosper lending requirements. There’s no proof whether it changes during economic downturns.

Risk Modeling

To calculate the company credit score, the company developed a custom risk model by using their historical data in addition to a data archive from a consumer credit bureau. They use this Prosper loan calculator to determine if you’re a good credit risk for them.

They built the model based upon a population of users who applied for a Borrower Loan. This was so that their model would incorporate behavior which is unique to that population.

A Prosper loans credit score is in contrast to a credit score from a credit reporting agency. That is based on a much broader population.

However, borrowers from this lender are only a small subset of those under consideration when developing a standard consumer credit score. The company then uses both the Prosper loan credit score and a borrower’s credit score to best gauge the level of risk. Their Prosper loan application will, of course, be under review.

Fees

There are no hidden fees or prepayment penalties. There shouldn’t be any difference during economic downturns.

Advantages

Advantages include fixed terms and no hidden fees. They say there is no Prosper origination fee. This should not change during economic downturns.

Disadvantages

Disadvantages include an unspecified interest rate. Also, they will perform an inquiry on your personal credit. Are you wondering, “is Prosper loan safe?” The answer is: maybe. In particular, during economic downturns, you need to be careful.

An Alternative During Economic Downturns: Building Business Credit

Small business credit is credit in a small business’s name. It doesn’t connect to an owner’s consumer credit, not even if the owner is a sole proprietor and the only employee of the small business. 

Therefore, a business owner’s business and personal credit scores can be very different.

This helps to secure a small business owner’s personal assets, in case of a lawsuit or business bankruptcy.

Also, with two distinct credit scores, a business owner can get two separate cards from the same merchant. This effectively doubles buying power.

Another benefit is that even startup businesses can do this. Heading to a bank for a business loan can be a recipe for frustration. But building small business credit, when done the right way, is a plan for success.

Personal credit scores are dependent on payments but also various other components like credit use percentages. 

But for business credit, the scores really merely hinge on if a business pays its debts punctually.

The Process

Establishing company credit is a process. It does not happen without effort. A small business needs to proactively work to build small business credit. 

However, it can be done easily and quickly, and it is much swifter than building personal credit scores. 

Merchants are a big aspect of this process.

Accomplishing the steps out of sequence leads to repetitive denials. No one can start at the top with business credit. For example, you can’t start with retail or cash credit from your bank. If you do, you’ll get a rejection 100% of the time.

The best part? This works during economic downturns.

Company Fundability

A business has to be fundable to loan providers and merchants. 

For that reason, a small business needs a professional-looking web site and e-mail address. And it needs to have site hosting bought from a merchant like GoDaddy. 

And also, company telephone and fax numbers should have a listing on 411. You can do that here: http://www.listyourself.net. 

At the same time, the company telephone number should be toll-free (800 exchange or the equivalent).

A business also needs a bank account dedicated solely to it, and it must have every one of the licenses necessary for running. 

Licenses

These licenses all must be in the particular, correct name of the company. And they need to have the same company address and telephone numbers. 

So note, that this means not just state licenses, but possibly also city licenses.

Economic Downturns Recession Credit Suite

Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN. Get money even in a recession!

Dealing with the IRS

Visit the Internal Revenue Service web site and get an EIN for the small business. They’re free. Choose a business entity such as corporation, LLC, etc. 

A small business can start off as a sole proprietor. But they probably wish to switch to a type of corporation or an LLC. 

This is to limit risk. And it will optimize tax benefits.

A business entity matters when it pertains to taxes and liability in case of litigation. A sole proprietorship means the business owner is it when it comes to liability and taxes. Nobody else is responsible.

Setting off the Business Credit Reporting Process

Start at the D&B web site and get a free D-U-N-S number. A D-U-N-S number is how D&B gets a small business into their system, to produce a PAYDEX score. If there is no D-U-N-S number, then there is no record and no PAYDEX score.

Once in D&B’s system, search Equifax and Experian’s web sites for the business. You can do this at www.creditsuite.com/reports. If there is a record with them, check it for accuracy and completeness. If there are no records with them, go to the next step in the process. 

This way, Experian and Equifax have something to report on.

Economic Downturns Recession Credit Suite

Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN. Get money even in a recession!

Vendor Credit

First you need to build trade lines that report. This is also called vendor credit. Then you’ll have an established credit profile, and you’ll get a business credit score. 

And with an established business credit profile and score you can begin to get retail and cash credit.

These kinds of accounts often tend to be for the things bought all the time, like marketing materials, shipping boxes, outdoor work wear, ink and toner, and office furniture.

But to start with, what is trade credit? These trade lines are credit issuers who give you starter credit when you have none now. Terms are in most cases Net 30, rather than revolving. 

Hence, if you get approval for $1,000 in vendor credit and use all of it, you must pay that money back in a set term, such as within 30 days on a Net 30 account.

Retail Credit

Once there are 3 or more vendor trade accounts reporting to at least one of the CRAs, then progress to retail credit. These are service providers such as Office Depot and Staples. 

Just use your Social Security Number and date of birth on these applications for verification purposes. For credit checks and guarantees, use the company’s EIN on these credit applications.

Fleet Credit

Are there more accounts reporting? Then move onto fleet credit. These are businesses like BP and Conoco. Use this credit to buy fuel, and to fix and maintain vehicles. Only use your SSN and date of birth on these applications for verification purposes. For credit checks and guarantees, make sure to apply using the business’s EIN.

Cash Credit

Have you been sensibly handling the credit you’ve up to this point? Then move onto more universal cash credit. These are service providers such as Visa and MasterCard. Just use your SSN and date of birth on these applications for verification purposes. For credit checks and guarantees, use your EIN instead.

These are commonly MasterCard credit cards. If you have more trade accounts reporting, then these are in reach.

A Word about Building Business Credit

Always use credit smartly! Don’t borrow more than what you can pay off. Keep an eye on balances and deadlines for repayments. Paying off punctually and fully does more to boost business credit scores than virtually anything else.

Establishing small business credit pays. Good business credit scores help a small business get loans. Your loan provider knows the company can pay its financial obligations. They recognize the company is bona fide. 

The small business’s EIN attaches to high scores and lending institutions won’t feel the need to demand a personal guarantee. This is especially key during economic downturns.

Economic Downturns Recession Credit Suite

Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN. Get money even in a recession!

Prosper Rates and More During Economic Downturns, on Balance

Given that the company likely to go public soon, their Board of Directors will be beholden to shareholder demands. This is as opposed to the requests of either borrowers or employees.

Furthermore, the company seems to shunt all small business loans off to OnDeck, anyway. It seems the best action for a small business owner to take is to bypass the middleman and go straight to OnDeck.

And finally, as with every other lending program, read the fine print and do the math. Go over the details carefully, and decide whether this option will be good for you and your company. Be vigilant during economic downturns.

In addition, consider alternative financing options that go beyond lending, including how to build business credit, to best decide how to get the money you need to help your business grow. Share this if you agree with our Prosper loan reviews.

The post Prosper and Economic Downturns appeared first on Credit Suite.

Google’s New Algorithm: Page Experience

Don’t worry… your traffic hasn’t gone down (or up) because of the Page Experience algorithm update hasn’t rolled out yet.

But it will in 2021 according to Google.

Due to the coronavirus, they decided to give us all a heads up on the future algorithm update and what it entails… that way you can adjust your website so your traffic doesn’t tank.

So, what’s the Page Experience update and how can you prepare for it?

Page Experience

In Google’s own words, here is what it means…

The page experience signal measures aspects of how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. Optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction.

In other words, they are looking for how usable your website is.

Here’s an example of what they don’t want…

As you can see from the graphic above, the user was trying to click on “No, go back”, but because an install bar popup up at the top, it pushed the whole page down and caused the user to accidentally click on “Yes, place my order.”

The purpose of this update is to make sure that sites that rank at the top aren’t creating experiences that users hate.

The simplest way to think about this update is that user-friendly sites will rank higher than sites that aren’t user friendly.

But this change is the start of a big shift in SEO.

Why is this update so important?

What sites do you think that Google wants to rank at the top?

Take a guess…

Maybe sites with the best backlinks?

Or sites with the buttoned up on page code?

It’s actually none of those.

Google wants to rank the sites at the top that users love the most.

Here’s what I mean…

When you want to buy athletic shoes, what brand comes to mind?

If I had to guess, I bet you’ll say Nike.

And if you were to get a credit card… I bet Visa, American Express, or Mastercard will come to mind.

This is why brand queries (the number of users who search for your brand name on Google and click on your website) impact rankings, which I’ve broken down as one of the most important SEO lessons I learned.

Just look at how the Neil Patel brand has grown over time… the graph below shows the number of people searching for my name over time:

And here is my SEO traffic over time:

As your brand grows so will your SEO traffic.

But that is old news, that’s been part of Google’s algorithm for years now.

Here is the thing though, most sites don’t have large brands and Google knows that. So, if you don’t have one, you can still rank.

At my ad agency, when we look at our clients and their growth over time, only 4% have large well-known brands. The other 96% are still seeing traffic growth.

What Google is doing is adapting its algorithm to more closely align with the mission of showing the sites first that users love the most.

And yes, brand queries are one of the ways they can do this, but user experience is another metric.

Over the next few years, I bet you will see many algorithm updates focusing on user experience.

So how do you optimize your user experience?

It’s starts with each page

If you look at the original article Google posted about the future algorithm change, they emphasize “page experience” or “website experience.”

It doesn’t mean that your whole website shouldn’t have a good user experience, but instead, I bet they are going to focus on their algorithm from a page-level basis.

Because if you have a few pages on your websites that have a poor experience, but the rest are good, it wouldn’t make sense for Google to reduce the rankings of your whole site, especially if many of your pages provide a much better experience than your competition.

Here’s how you optimize your user experience:

Step #1: Optimize your speed and reduce 400 errors

The faster your website loads, the better experience you’ll have.

Go to this page and enter in your URL.

You’ll then see a report that looks like this:

You’ll notice two important aspects of that report that impact user experience that I’ve highlighted in the screenshot above.

In the health checkbox, you’ll want to make sure there are no broken pages. Broken pages create bad experiences.

In the site speed box, you’ll see the load time of your site. The faster your site loads the better. Try to get your website load time for both desktop and mobile under 3 seconds.

Ideally you should be in the 1-second range if possible.

Step #2: Compare your experience to your competitions’

You may think you have an amazing user experience, but how does it stake up to your competition?

So go here and type in your biggest competitor.

I want you to go into the navigation and click on “Top Pages.”

You should see a report like this:

The Top Pages report shows the most popular pages on your competition’s site from an SEO perspective. The pages at the top are the ones with the most SEO traffic, which means they are doing something right.

I want you to go through their top 50 pages. Seriously, their top 50 pages, and look at the user experience of each of those pages.

What is it that they are doing? How does their content quality compare to yours? What are the differences between their website compared to yours?

For each page that ranks, I also want you to click on “View All” under the “Est. Visits” heading. This will show you all of the keywords each page ranks for.

When evaluating your competition’s user experience, keep in mind how they are delighting people who search for any of those keywords. This will give you an idea of what you need to do as well.

But your goal shouldn’t be to match your competition, it should be to beat your competition.

Step #3: Analyze your design

Remember the graphic I showed above of what Google doesn’t want? Where the user tried to click on “No, go back” instead of “Yes, place my order” due to design issues.

In most cases you won’t have that issue, but you will have other usability issues.

The way you find usability issues is through heatmaps. Just like this one:

What you can do to find usability issues is run a Crazy Egg test on your site.

Once you log into Crazy Egg, you’ll see a dashboard that looks like this:

On the top right, I want you to click on “Create New” and select “Snapshot.”

Then select “Multiple Snapshots.”

From there, you’ll want to add at least 3 popular URLs on your site. Over time you’ll want to do this with all of your popular pages.

Then you’ll see settings like the image below, you don’t need to do anything here. Just click “Next.”

You’ll then be able to review everything. If it looks good, you can click the “Create Snapshots” button in the bottom right.

Last but not least, you’ll have to install your tracking script.

So, click on “Install Tracking Script.”

Select the option that works for you and then you are off and to the races. For example, for NeilPatel.com I use WordPress so I would select the WordPress option.

Once you are setup, it will take at least a day to see results, if not a bit longer. It depends on your traffic.

If you get thousands of visitors to your site each day you’ll see results within a few hours.

After you set up your test and it has been a few days, log back into Crazy Egg and click on Snapshots in the sidebar.

Once you are there you will see a list of snapshots you have created.

Click on any of your snapshots and you’ll see a heatmap of how people are engaging with your web page.

What’s cool about snapshots is they show you every single click, or even scroll that people take. Just look at this example from the NeilPatel.com site.

As you can see, people are clicking on those images above the text. But there is an issue… can you guess what it is?

If you click those images, nothing happens. But for all of those people to click on those images, it means that they believe they are clickable and that something should happen when they click on them.

An easy fix for me is to make them clickable and when a user clicks maybe I would take them to a page that goes into detail on each of those features. Or maybe I could expand upon each feature right there on that page.

Once you make the fixes to your page, you will want to re-run a new Crazy Egg snapshot on the same page to see if the changes helped improve the user experience.

Step #4: Install the Ubersuggest Chrome extension

If you haven’t already, install the Ubersuggest Chrome extension.

Here’s why…

When you do a Google search, you’ll see data on each ranking URL.

When you are naturally using Google throughout your day and searching for keywords related to your industry, I want you to look at 2 main metrics in Ubersuggest:

  1. Domain score – the higher the number, the more authority a website has.
  2. Links – the more links a website has, usually the higher it will rank.

So, when you are doing searches, look for sites that have a lower domain score and fewer backlinks than the competition, but yet still rank high.

Chances are, they rank high because of things like user experience. Maybe their text is more appealing than the competition, maybe their bounce rate is lower… it could be a wide variety of reasons, but these are the sites you want to look at and analyze.

In the image above, you see that the result from the AMA ranks higher than Hubspot yet they have fewer links and a lower domain score. So, if you were trying to rank for that keyword, you would want to spend more time analyzing AMA because they are doing something right.

Conclusion

User experience is going to be more and more important over time.

If you love a site and everyone else loves that site, Google will eventually want to make sure that the site ranks high.

On the flip side, if everyone feels a website has a terrible user experience, then Google won’t rank that website as high in the long run.

Just like any algorithm update Google does, expect to see multiple revisions over time. As they learn, they adapt to make their algorithms more effective over time.

But what is unique about this update is you have advanced notice, which is nice. So, take the opportunity and fix any usability issues you may have.

What other ways can you make your website more usable?

The post Google’s New Algorithm: Page Experience appeared first on Neil Patel.

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New comment by helloimagr in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2020)"

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We’re a fast-moving starting changing the face of grocery retail with our computer-vision empowered shopping cart. Come and join us, delivering an exciting real-world application of deep learning and computer vision.

We are looking for an engineer well-versed in image processing techniques to work on a range of challenging, bleeding-edge problems. Apply now!

New comment by magg in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2020)"

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Article URL: http://www.strikingly.com/s/careers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23375443

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