Become a Lending Club investor and win $2,500

Peer to Peer lending isn't just a good way to get a loan for consolidating your debt or launching a small business, it's also a great way to invest.

LendingClub.com, one of the best known p2p lenders, is celebrating its growth and the popularity of peer-to-peer lending by giving away $2,500 to its 25,000th investor. Given the $25 minimum investment at Lending Club, that means you could instantly earn 100 times your investment in addition to the average return of 9.64% for loans made through Lending Club.

The contest runs through September, or until the 25,000th Investor joins Lending Club, and is open to all residents of the United States. Even though the contest is celebrating the 25,000th investor, you don't actually have to invest in a loan to enter. If you want to wait until you find the right individual to lend to, you are still eligible to win if you complete the sign up process.Investing money through LendingClub.com is pretty simple. After you complete the sign up process, which includes verifying your identity and linking your bank account, you can browse through thousands of loan requests from individuals and small businesses who are looking for cash. Since you only need to invest $25 in each loan you want to invest in, you can even diversify your investments so that you can take a risk on one individual while being a little more careful on the rest of your investments.

If you want to familiarize yourself with the Lending Club loan process and learn more about why and how some individuals invest in lending club, I highly recommend that you read Lending Club: Invest in Your Friends at FiveCentNickel and My Review of Social Lending which WalletPop profiled in A Borrower's Look at Using Lending Club. To learn more about the peer-to-peer lending industry in general, be sure to check out WalletPop's interview with Chris Larsen, CEO of Prosper.com, to learn all about peer-to-peer lending.

If you still aren't ready to enter the peer-to-peer lending market, you can still score some free stuff from Lending Club by entering their Twitter contest. For the next two weeks they are giving away Lending Club t-shirts, messenger bags, pens and other items to anyone who tweets about the promotion before Sept. 15th. The easiest way to enter is to simply tweet: "Become @LendingClub's 25,000th investor and win $2,500 by September 30 http://bit.ly/36sz8 RT to win t-shirt"

What are you waiting for? Get busy tweeting or investing for your chance to win and help someone out at the same time.