Diversification is really a key thing with us, and as the commentator mentioned above never invest more than you can handle. You'll continue to see a lot of changes with us going forward, we are getting a lot tougher on fraud and bringing quality borrowers to the platform. If you want to get started throw a tiny amount in 0.1 and invest 0.001 if you wanted across numerous loans. This will give you a good feel for investing on the site and get you familiar with borrowers.
Diversification only ensures that when you get scammed, you have lost too little to go after it. It is death by 10000 cuts.
I'm actually slowly getting out of BTCjam with a profit, but the only reason I have a profit is I stopped diversifying. Instead I poured more BTC in the few people that didn't scam and had a reasonable story. That worked, but getting that list of good borrowers was an expensive horrible experience.
The upshot is you can make money there, but you have to really look out for yourself. Personally I don't think the advice from the site is in investor's best interest, you need to think for yourself.
Very interesting point, and it is good to hear that someone is profitable as I see some horror stories online and some great reviews, but not many unbiased neutral ones. I think more people complain online than post positive occurances, so it is nice to read your post with a neutral point of view (not a hater and not a shill) which is rare!
I know investors with good histories can default, but do you think some kind of pool of investors sharing experiences and good borrowers could help? Of course this would be kept within the group so I cannot see it violating TOS in anyway, but I could see just like people share stock tips and such, that a group of investors that stuck together could be useful to each other.
I based my thoughts off of my own common sense as far as thinking diversification would help, but I can see where your point about picking the right ones and not stretching out too much could be successful, so very interesting points.
Thanks for the kind words.
I don't have a problem with sharing the borrowers that have been good. Part of the issue at BTCjam is that if you are investor you aren't allowed to give feedback on the borrowers unless you go through the same identifying steps as borrows. I guess that is to prevent fake investors from giving false feedback, but I think that once some has loaned out more than one BTC they should be able to give feedback. Investors really don't need to be cleared if they are investing in loans.
As for good borrowers: TechGeeks, Alex077, Detz where the 3 big ones that pulled me back to profit. There were many others that paid, sometimes a little late but paid. The main reason I stopped loaning though is all the loans went to once a month payments. Personally I don't like that since we have so little visibility into the borrowers. Since TechGeeks was very interactive and seem to be answering pretty honesty, I pretty much put all my free BTC at the site whenever he had a loan. That worked really well.
I did put small amounts into new borrowers too and that has mostly been okay probably because I became very picky.