dvd's hyip blog

End of a chapter

2010-09-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

HyipCalculator update: a friend asked me if I could share among my readers, his nice tool, an investments calculator, with most of features we use in hyip like days of investment, if 7 days per week or just Mon-Friday and compound.
I usually do all the calcs myself, because I rarely use compound, making things easier.
But with a calculator of this kind (or your own Excel sheet) you can save a bit of time and help you with calcs involving partial compound.

Hello folks, you probably have noticed that last week there were fewer and fewer updates in my blog.
There is no way to deny it: since my master degree started, my time to dedicate to my blog was severed lowered, and it will be even less as the course goes forward, especially when I need to start thinking about the thesis I will have to do.
Since I created this blog I always followed the rule "won't affect my personal life", and last year I was able to do it without problems, as my schedule was quite generous for me.
But now this no longer true.

So, here is the final update: dvdhyip is closing, there won't be more updates or articles (unless I really change my mind), and the site will remain as it is now, as long blogspot exists or doesn't delete it, so all the info it contains will remain available to everyone (my main wish was always to share knowledge). I will became again a regular investor in this industry.
I added a "export news" script from hyipnews.com, to at least have the latest news shown in my blog, even being inactive. The layout had some changes and I removed some banners and the current advertiser (Optimum pride) will be refunded accordingly.
The monitor page will be updated when any program falls, removing it, until there is nothing on it.

Overall it was a really great experience, I learned a lot from more experienced people, improved my research/critic skills for investments (whatever hyips, online or offline ventures) and my English is now miles better than 1 year ago.

I hope you liked this journey with my blog as much as I liked :)

Without nothing more to add, I wish all the best with your life and investments,
David

Fenix Trust update

2010-09-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

Once again, Fenix Trust has improved their site, adding Spanish language to it (including to phone number), allowing a better coverage/popularity of countries where this language is predominant.
I understand a bit because of its similarity to Portuguese, but far from being able to tell if it is an automatic translation. Still, it's better than having link to google translator lol:

Dear Spanish-speaking Internet users and active investors. For your convenience we have translated the interface of Fenix Trust into Spanish. In the future we plan to add more languages to our website.

Also please note that we have a Spanish speaking operator in our Support team.

Phone: +598 97174012 (For english and spanish speaking users) Working time: 9:00 to 17:00 GMT -3

Maybe this will improve the growth (it is now growing again, but a bit slow).

End of free surfer (for new members)

2010-09-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

It seems the cash cow option for smaller investors will be closed, although current members already inside this plan can still enjoy it:

Free Surfer Plan expire

The Free surfer plan will end today. It has served its purpose, giving us the number of viewers we wanted. The amount of new users to the Private plans and Investor plans is sufficient enough to give a good balance between advertising and viewers. Users who already purchased the Free Surfer Plan can continue using this one. However, the site numbers to view will be increased from 40 to 60 pages.

For those who already have 10 accounts on Vaults, this will mean that total time surfing will increase from ~20min to ~30-35 min if you do the trick I shown in my Vaults article (having 10 FireFox browsers opened at same time).

Honestly I am happy with this decision, because, frankly, I don't know where the money come from to pay this plan. Imagine 1000 members, each one with 10 accounts...this means 10000 free surfer plans, translating into 4000$ given each day for these accounts, and at after ~30 days it will be 120.000$.
Once again, don't ask me how they make money, but maybe there wasn't that amount of accounts, mainly after switching from auto to manual surf, that surely lowered the popularity of this plan, and now with 60 pages to surf it can further lower the "active" accounts because people doing the 10 accounts in serial (instead of parallel like we do) probably will give up.

But if the admin decided to close this plan, it probably means there was already a considerable number of accounts with this plan, and this measure was to avoid further increase of this plan above from the level they can sustain.

That's what I liked in Vaults so far, not only it is a success in my book (considering its online time and its high-ROI plans) but also has a very pro-active administration that take measures to help the longevity of the program.

Despite all of this, I strongly recommend to treat it like a game when playing with the other high-ROI plans, as all risks are still there like high-ROI hyips.

Here is a small Alexa analysis for those willing to invest on other plans:

Taking the 5.000 mark has the "really dangerous level" we can take two approaches:
-more negative, taking the overall growth since early August (red line); with this approach, Vaults should have no problems until early October.
-less negative, taking only the current growth in consideration, because the August explosive growth could also be due to growth of free surfer plans and people coming back from holidays.
With this approach, the dangerous level should only be hit in mid October.

But we also need to keep in mind that this growth was mainly due to free surfer plan, and things can slow down, or even decline with the end of this plan.
On other hand, the administration keep bringing more features and higher "investor plans" that can help a gradual growth on cashflow, like happened with original "surf" plans. But currently these investor plans are already at 1.000$, so I don't know how much more it can be stretched.
Maybe later the admin will decrease the profits of these investor plans, making original surf plans more attractive again (that force people to start from low amounts).

Time will tell, if you decide to play with high-ROI plans keep looking at Alexa graph trend.

News

2010-09-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today there are only a couple news:
Cash-Miner: officially moved to not paying status due to lack of admin reply to tickets. Probably it's done.

Ethanolb/BestEthanol- brought a strange move...it has intentions to close for members and deposits during October.
I don't know why did the administration decided that, but going "private" is never a good thing from what I seen in past. I just hope they know what are doing, and be prepared for negative comments from investors and bloggers, because this will be seen as the "going private" strategy to lure investors to deposit more, by creating a limited opportunity.

Like I said for the old Aballong...don't let this update influence you into depositing more, stick to your initial strategy.
I will change EthanolB risk level in my list to med-high, because it will be the risk for new deposits/members considering this update.
If it is a ponzi, this change will probably kill it, although it's possible for a ponzi to survive even if it goes private, mainly one with variable plans...by...cough....cough... opening side scams, but lets not give ideas lol, and honestly it wouldn't make sense from the admin standpoint because would just increase his work for nothing.

Here is the update:

Most Investment program's in the Internet fail. EthanolB wants to make sure such things not happen to Investors and to the EthanolB business. We choose a course where investors and the EthanolB team ending up satisfied.

Don't worry this is not a running out of money email.

On 01.10.2010 EthanolB does not accept new members anymore.
On 10.10.2010 EthanolB does delete all inactive members.
On 01.11.2010, EthanolB does not accept new deposits anymore.

Every investor receive daily payments of 0.4%-2.2%, until he reaches 180% of the initial investment. An 80% benefits and the initial investment. The last person to achieve this amount should be recorded by May 2011 or earlier.

Money Management

2010-09-15T06:01:00.001-07:00

As I said before in my blog, this is a very important topic, because I have learned that it is one of biggest "pillars" to have bigger chances of success (but obviously it alone can't do miracles) in either hyip world or "real" investments like Stocks, Forex, Real Estate and other kind of investments.

There are many Money Management (MM) strategies, but it is always important to adapt to the market we are investing, because sometimes one MM technique we use in one market might not be the better for other market.
For example, I don't use the same MM style for hyips and bet trading, simply because:
-in hyip world I invest in different hyips at same time, and must keep looking for new hyips with potential; and I usually need to wait a considerable amount of time before having principals back.

-in bet trading I only "invest" in one match at each time, with some exceptions when there are many matches at same hour. And usually in a timeframe of ~2hours I already know if I earned something or lost.

So for hyip world I use a "reinvest profits style" of MM, where I keep investing in new/same hyips with the previous profits, way before having principal back from olders hyips.
In bet trading, since most of times when I place the next bet I already know the result of previous match, I believe it is more suitable to have a base bet size (like 5% of balance). This allows me to dinamically change the amount I bet to help lowering the losses in bad situations and increasing the profits in good situations.
In the end, both MM strategies have similarities (compounding in long-term if we are earning profits), but each one adapted for its market, although the strategy I use in bets could be used (to some degree) for short-term hyips.

But enough of this introduction and let's focus on hyips.
Over the time I used different MM strategies, and saw some people using others, and over all this time I've seen that some strategies can help more than others. But of course it all boils down to what kind of investment style you have (more short-term or more longer term).

-invest in just 1-3 hyips (low diversification): well, I think all of you already know the old "don't place all your eggs in just one basket".
But, over the time, I found people relying too much in just few programs, and mainly investing big amounts on them (and some even high-ROI hyips), to later lose when the program collapsed.
I know sometimes there are few hyips worth investing, but in these cases I advise to place 10-15% (for each hyip) in those 1-3 programs and save the rest for future because better programs will probably show up.

-"plain" invest with good diversification: with the "plain" I mean without major MM strategy. For example you start with 1000$ and invest in 10 programs and then withdraw all profits to your pocket (out from e-currencies) without reinvesting, or creating a reserve for future programs, that greatly reduce the flexibility for long-run and maximizing profits.
With this strategy you already have some better chances to earn, depending on the programs you choose, but there are still some downs:
-you miss the opportunity to maximize profits, because you stick to these programs without looking for new programs;
-you are more vulnerable to big losses if a program falls just after you invested, as the deposits still have a considerable size.

About the question: "how many hyips should I invest?". Well, there is no "correct" number, and there is no need to invest into countless programs just because of sake of diversifying because you will tend to invest in "less good" hyips that can bring more losses than profits.

"Cyclical" Good diversification with reserve system: Basically you choose a number of hyips you can manage without problem (let assume 10 hyips), and then instead of withdrawing everything to you pockets, you instead left a % of the earnings sitting in e-currency account. Then, when a hyip falls, you can use this reserve to invest into a another hyips that looks good.
If there is no good enough hyip at moment you keep waiting and increasing the reserve until decent hyips appear, and then instead of 1 you can invest in 2 (or more if in mean time more hyips have fallen).
This allows better flexibility and can already work as a "reinvest/compound" mode, depending on how much % you place into the reserve fund.
I have used a similar strategy in 2nd half of 2009, and worked quite well, but still has the one disadvantage (also present on above strategies):
-you place too much at once in one program. And sometimes the program can die quickly...

Good diversification with reserve system: similar to previous strategy, but in this case you use the reserve as soon you find a good program, worth investing, even if all programs in your list keep doing well.
The advantage of this MM strategy over the previous is the fact that you are not tied to your current list, without needing to wait until one program falls, increasing flexibility, and also helps better decisions because in the previous MM system, you are investing after a program fall, that can mix up a bit your emotions, especially if you were at loss in that program.

This was the MM system I used mainly in 1st half of 2010.

"Reinvest profits style":
As you probably have noticed, I started from the simplest MM style to the more "dynamic" strategies. Of course the more dynamic is the MM, the more work you have, but in overall it is worth it.

Basically with this strategy you are always reinvesting back into new/existing hyips.
For example, in a weekly basis, or bi-weekly you analyze the current hyip market, and select a few hyips to invest (new, or already in your portfolio) that still have potential to turn the deposit you will do in profit.
This way you keep a "continuum" of new programs coming to your portfolio, and increase over the time the total money in "proved" programs already in your portfolio that still have good chances to bring profit.
So this strategy also diminishes big deposits at once in one "new" program, because, since you are reinvesting profits, the amount invested each week (or bi-week) is not too much compared to overall balance you already have invested in hyips. This way, if that program dies after your first investment, you won't lose much (relatively speaking).

How much of the profits should you reinvest? Well, actually it's your choice, but I think something around 70-80% is quite good. At least 50%, to have chance of increasing your capital, although 70-80% increase these chances. And with 90% you are already paying to little to yourself, increasing the probability to not reinvest one or another time to withdraw more profits.

Now another important question, how to start? Honestly I don't know the best way, but I believe a good way can be splitting your capital in 5-10 parts and invest gradually.
For example, you start with your capital, and you just see 3 hyips worth investing. You can take ~30% from your capital and place appropriate amounts into each hyip, accordingly to its quality, like 12%, 10% and 8%.
The rest 70%, you can divide into 7 parts, and invest each part weekly or bi-weekly, when you reinvest the profits.

There could be possibly better ways to start, this was just one example to do things "gradually".

And that's all for this article. I know there are others MM that people use, some with loss recovery (it can bankrupt faster than you think if you have bad luck), but here I tried to cover some I used, and others that seem to be quite frequent among investors.

Remember that Money Management can help your success in investments, and many times it's almost ignored by many people.
I incentive you to research well this topic, and chose the best MM for you, keeping in mind it can:
-increase profits over the time;
-lower losses in bad situations.

Knowledge Area

2010-09-05T03:46:00.000-07:00

This area is still in construction, and probably will always be because new articles appear, and some might be added here.

Hello, and welcome to dvdhyip's Knowledge Area, something I always wanted to do. This is mostly a compilation of some (maybe) good educating articles I did in past, placed here to make their information easier to find.
Some articles might be outdated, so I added a small description here for each article to explain a bit the context and the idea behind it.

How to use: click on the article you want, then you will be moved to the article summary/description. Click on the new link shown and you will be moved to article's page.

1- Introduction articles, a must read for all new investors
-----"First line" guide
-----Hyips=games
-----E-currencies and exchangers: my own experience
-----Advices: good or bad

2- Intermediate level articles
-----Money Management

First line guide
This article was based on Extremesurfs (and current ExtremeBlog and ExtremeChange admin) guide to high-ROI hyips/surfs sites. Still, it has plenty of good information about how this industry works, and it can also be applied to low-ROI hyips.

Hyips=Games
This in one of my best articles (considering the feedback I got from my readers about it).
I basically try to convince everyone to treat hyips like games, in order to help you to keep emotions away when dealing with hyips and investing, because it will allow you to make better decisions.
The same can be applied to all stocks, Forex, gambling, betting. Treating all kind of online and offline financial ventures as games will help you to prepare yourself to expect losses, and in overall you will be less influenced by your emotions.
I can give you my own experience in Betting world: in past I used to consider if my favorite team was playing or not and sometimes I did bad decisions because I thought it would secure a winning score, or wouldn't score more goals. Now I avoid matches where my favorite team plays, and in overall I have had much less losses because I follow more strictly my initial strategy.

E-currencies and exchangers: my own experience
In this article, my objective was not to explain the features of each e-currency and exchanger, but instead show a bit of experience I had/have with them, and tell what I like/dislike on each of them.
I did this article because I know new people in hyip world are always afraid of which e-currency to chose (I found people saying bad things of each one, so it's not easy to "see" which one is reliable), and the same for exchangers because there are plenty of scammers/bad services among exchangers.

Advices: good or bad
There is some controversy about advices, if bloggers should give them or not. I defend two positions about advices, because I believe they can be used for bad purposes (luring/convincing people to invest) or for educational purposes. It just depends on the person writing the advices and how readers should read them.
In my blog, you should treat my advices/opinions as incentives to do your own research and not to follow blindly.

Money Management
With this article I intend to show the importance of Money Management and introduce this topic a little, because it's many times not considered important by many people.
Yet I believe it plays a big role in your success when investing in hyips, that can increase profits and reduce losses, so this is an important topic to start the intermediate level.
-----------------------//-------------------------

Good research about AMF and Vintech status update

2010-09-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, today I came across a good review of AMF did by HyipBlogger. In my opinion it is one of best reviews I saw because it has a good research about the past of AMF, and Tony even asked some older members about refunds of the "old" AMF.

Here is the link, I recommend to read it.

About Vintech I had to move to waiting status. I am aware that they don't pay on weekends, but I requested my payment in early Thursday.
It is still inside the 48 hours timeframe, but usually the payments were fast. Hopefully it is nothing, and I've fingers crossed to receive payment on Monday.

Lately I have been doing a research in my past articles, and today I hope to start publishing a compilation of my most educational articles and create some kind of "Knowledge Area" to make this info available to new readers.
This is something I always wanted to do since I started the blog, but only now I have decent articles covering almost everything I want (including the recent article about ecurrencies and exchangers).

Great article about LR new terms

2010-09-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, during my daily "blogs" surf I found, in HyipNEWS.com a great article that explains much better my opinion than the small "text" I published in previous article.

Although I don't the like (much) the part of giving them power to block suspicious accounts, I am ok with it, because in practice it will be almost impossible to properly track money because all accounts are anonymous.
That's why I said these are mostly rules to look good on paper.

Now, what this article explains better (that I forgot/failed to explain properly) is the fact of LR created these rules because it's part of evolution of LR, and it must protect themselves against financial authorities, and potential claims of helping money laundering, like e-gold was accused of (if I understood correctly its story):

LibertyReserve has reached the level of development and the importance when there is a need to protect itself from possible claims by the authorities. By having this condition in User Agreement, they get a tool that will allow them to solve problems in collaboration with the authorities in extreme cases. And this, of course, does not impose any restrictions on work with clients (and almost all HYIPs are among them). Many other currencies and payment processors have the same rules and many issues simply must be talked over.

CompaxTrade review

2010-08-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

Not Paying

Hello folks, once again a reader emailed me asking for a review, and once again (because I am lazy) I decided to also publish it here to allow other readers to know what I think about CompaxTrade.

Please note that all links don't have referral link, so if you want to try your luck with this hyip I advise to use a monitor or blog offering ref back.

Plans: the two smaller plans, 1% and 1.3% for 180days, (which should be more than enough for 99% of the investors) are similar to what we were used to have in past programs, and should have no problems in being sustainable, but I don't know if they are attractive enough for "today's standards".
The later plans are...well a bit excessive, but probably no one will use them.

I would prefer bigger plans on the lower side, to make it more competitive, by including the principal in the earnings (avoiding large withdrawals). And maintaining or lower the bigger plans.

Design and content: The design is attractive, but it's far from making us "wow". The content seems to be original, and I like the trading reports because it adds some legitimacy to it, although it doesn't proof nothing. In fact it shows the higher plans 2.2% and 2.5% (translating into ~44% ~50% monthly) can't be sustained by the trades, even on great months, like June (with 41.46% shown by them), let alone a month like August (with just ~2.5%).
Probably these reports are created out of the hat, but still are a good effort from the program to sell his "fish".

Claims vs BS: they claim to be online since 2009. There are even news from 2009 in the site. But we never never heard from them before, all threads in major forums started in 25 August 2010, the domain was updated in 23 August 2010, and SSL certificate created in 17 August 2010. Probably they took the advantage of the domain being almost 1 year old, and created the 2009 news and offlline to online story in order to make it credible.

Security and script: The script is...well, I don't know. For sure it isn't NeverSay or GoldCoders, but it's very familiar to me, and the drop down menu to choose the currency in the deposit page is similar to some hyips I seen. Probably a custom script from a programmer that also did scripts to other hyips.
The host and DDoS protection provider is Dragonara. Whois tells the host is shared, but I checked Dragonara page, and they only offer dedicated servers, so probably whois info hasn't been updated yet (and one more fact against the claim about being online since 2009).
It also has SSL, that although it's not forced, it is automatically activated when logging in or when registering a new account.

Payment processors: LR, PM and bank wires. They claim to accept other e-currencies in the FAQ, but the script only accepts LR and PM, so I don't know how much more e-currencies they accepts.

Risk vs Reward: it's still early to make any kind of analyze using Alexa trends in growth. Still, it's worth mentioning that there is currently a pretty big spike in Alexa. Honestly I don't know the reason of it, as I haven't seen this program advertised/reviewed in the blogs I visit daily. Maybe it's the admin trying to manipulate traffic, or used a lot of monitors because the thread at TG already have 9 pages. This make me wonder (using lots of monitors) about admin intentions to run a slow burner or fast race hyip (being fast also falls faster).

In first plan, you will need 100 business days (20 weeks, ~5months or ~140 calendar days). Frankly this is a lot of time, and you will have to face the black December and survive it in order to reach 100% return (principal back).
And, considering how the launch was (probably due to the use of many monitors), I have a few doubts about its survivability during December.
Of course we never know, and most of times (if admin is decent), it will be the market that decides the future of a hyip.
For anyone willing to join it, I would advise to wait 1-2 weeks to see if Alexa finally gives us a trend (declining, slow growth or fast growth).

To end this review, if I had to give CompaxTrade a final score, it would be...well I even don't know, maybe 2.5/5 in the long-term scale, because honestly it is below of Safe Depositary (3/5) in terms of overall quality and in risk/reward area.

I hope you find this review useful, and remember to always keep your investments at an affordable level.

E-currencies and exchangers: my own experience

2010-08-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, with this article I won't cover in depth each e-currency by telling its characteristics and other info you can find in many places.

Here I will focus in what matters more (in my opinion): my experience with each one.
I know I promised this article almost an year ago, but I that time I clearly didn't have enough experience with most e-currencies, mainly LR at that time.
Now I use LR, AP, STP and MoneyBookers (although I won't cover the this one because it's not used in hyips, but mainly in betting world) in a daily basis, and sometimes PM and GDP

E-currencies

Liberty Reserve: well known as LR. This is by far the most popular e-currency in hyips nowadays, with virtually every hyip accepting it (with just some rare exceptions).
It's main feature it's the ease of use, because you don't need to verify anything, just open an account and start playing with it, in full anonymity, and with as many accounts as you want.
And all transactions are final, meaning that all money you receive is yours and won't be reverted.

However, these advantages also play against it:
-it's the currency most attacked by hackers/malicious software, because if anyone "cleans" your account, there is very little you can do.
-it helps scammers, as they won't have problems with blocked accounts or something (although this is a good thing for decent admins)
-by being totally anonymous it poses some potential issues, in case something happen to it just like happened to StrictPay. I mean...the accounts are anonymous, how do you expect to prove the ownership of a determined account(s) if something bad happens to LR?

Another thing I don't like in LR it's the lack of direct options to deposit/withdraw. This can increase the flexibility of the options to deposit/withdraw by using third party exchangers, but unfortunately in this industry is full of scammers, and sometimes exchangers are part of it.

Overall I like Liberty Reserve for a daily use, but I wouldn't trust big amounts of funds on it, due to potential hacking issues, and lack of being properly regulated (being based in Costa Rica doesn't give me too much security, just look at SP situation...)

About good exchangers to deposit/withdraw LR, I will give some later in this article.

PerfectMoney- or PM. I don't use much because for me it's another "LR": no KYC policy and irreversible transfers. And every hyip accepting it also accepts LibertyReserve.
However PM adds what LR lacks: direct options to deposit and withdraw, without the need of third party exchangers.
Still, PM never got as popular as LR, maybe because of some rumors in past and some problems they had with bank wires withdrawals (pretty much like SP faced initially).

Just like LR, it's good and easy to use, but trusting big amounts? Simply no.

Global Digital Pay- or GDP. Just like PM, it doesn't add nothing substantial over LR.
And for me...it's still a new kid that need to prove himself.
Some severe downtime it faced back in March haven't helped at all its reputation.

StrictPay- (SP) it's a dead duck right now. It's not even worth of being mentioned, apart of warning to not deposit any money on it now.

AlertPay- (AP). This processor is in another level from LR/PM/GDP, because it is a KYC (know your customer) processor and allow charge backs and accounts blocking.
This adds a lot more security, because it means less problems with hackers, and mainly, can be a good ally for your hyips investments against some admins, as you can complain in case the admin don't want to pay you.
Also, by blocking accounts, it can means you have a chance of recovering part of your initial in those cases where a program fall before you are in profit.

The biggest use I gave to AP was to play in high-ROI games, because of it "extra" layer of protection when a program falls. While those using LR/PM/GDP are stuck with the losses...with AP you usually have better chances to not lose everything, if you are not in profit.
Of course sometimes the admins are pretty clever and start withdrawing since the beginning of the program, or offer "free" exchange from LR/PM/GDP to AP, to get rid of the later. When this happen, it is usually a red flag, because means the admin is preparing the bags to leave.
And also means your chances to get back money in case of site closure gets much lower.

Of course AP isn't just good things, and in fact, these "features" that give you some protection can also be a problem:
-AP can block accounts of paying programs, bringing them a lot of cashflow trouble. This affects severely low-ROI and high-ROI programs, although in the laters it is almost a death setence because things happens at a too fast pace.

But why does AP blocks accounts of paying hyips?
-most accounts are opened with fake/robbed documents, or bought in black market.
- if there are too many complains from jealous people, AP will probably block the account to double check what's going on. And obviously, the admin can't prove the ownership of the account most of times.
-and then here is my half-baked theory...imagine yourself in AP position. Now imagine someone opened an account with faked documents with a regular mail and name.
Then imagine what's happen next....the account, being used for a hyip, start getting lots of money entering on it.
And then? I bet AP becomes like "wtf!! Why there is so much money in this account in just couple days", and with this thought it's not hard to think why the account is blocked to verify the documents better and/or ask more more to make sure the account is not robbed or something.
Then you know what happens most of times...the hyip admin can't prove the account belongs to him...

Keep in mind that this is an half-baked theory, just based in assumptions, and because many accounts get blocked a few days after the launch of the hyip.

Now, based in my experience, I separate two kind of accounts (this also works for STP):
-those that have an name and email totally different from the hyip. These kind of accounts probably bought in black market and have a high probability of being blocked very quickly.

-those that have a name and email associated with the hyip site. These have lower incidence of getting blocked. Probably because AP is aware they are being used for a hyip, and maybe double check it very early.

Still, when a program gets its AP account blocked, what you prefer:
-being part of LR crew and face a potential loss in case the program can't survive?
-or being part of people using AP, and have some probability of being, even if not fully, refunded?

For me it's obvious....for high-ROI games it's AP or STP.
For low-ROI programs, things are a bit different because you can only complain within 30days (or something similar) in case the hyip stops paying.
Honestly, I don't have experience about how things are done after these 30days.

Another features I love in AP are:
-direct bank transfer for deposits and withdrawals, with low fees. But keep in mind this option might not be available in your country.
-much more regulated than LR and similars. AP is under Canada and US laws. If I remember well, E-gold was also under US legislation and got problems for this. I don't know it happened to E-gold (I suspect because it was used for money laundering), but probably won't happen to AP because it is more strict about KYC policies and money laundering.

So my overall opinion about AP: great for daily use, after the verification. And also, I trust bigger amounts on it than on LR/PM/GDP.
But I still don't trust too much money...we never know what can happen lol.

SolidTrustPay-(STP). I like it more and more. Overall it is pretty much like AP, and offers a similar "layer" of protection.
People usually like it more than AP because it blocks much fewer accounts from paying programs....however this is mainly because STP is nowhere popular as AP, and if STP was used as much as AP in hyips, I would bet we would also see a similar rate of accounts blocked.

Like I said: it is AP revisited.
But there is one feature I simply love on it over AlertPay: the debit card option to withdraw funds. It's simply awesome, I usually use the priority service and on next days the funds are loaded in my card, allowing me to withdraw in most ATMs.
With AP I am stuck with ~5days to see the money in my bank account.

I heard some issues with debit cards in past, mainly delays in getting funds loaded to cards.
Honestly I don't know if this still happens because I am not the best example, as I usually only load my card with ~100€ (~135$) from time to time.
So, for small investors like me, I can say it works pretty well. For bigger amounts, try yourself and tell us your experiences.

Exchangers

There are plenty of them in this industry, some great, others good and some that are simply crap or worst, scammers.
Just an important note: for STP and AP I advise to use approved exchangers because both can annoy you if you get funds "not approved". I never had any issue, but I heard stories of AP accounts getting blocked because of this.

eCardOne- the first exchanger I ever used, it even had another name. It was to load my LR account.
For European people this is one of best options because the bank wires are under SEPA agreement, meaning the fees are pretty low (for me was 3€ if I remember correctly).
Also, this exchanger has a big reputation (or at least used to have).

Nowadays I use it most for instant exchanges between LR usd and LR eur, and to/from GDP.

xChanger- the exchanger I use most and my favorite. My relation with exchanger started a long time ago, when I was much more newbie, and the admin helped me a lot several times by exchanging from e-currencies not listed on the commercial service to LR.
This not only was a big help at that time, but also increased a lot my trust on admin.

What I mainly like in this exchanger is:
-cover all 6 major e-currencies used in hyips.
-the exchanges from LR to STP/AP are usually very, very quickly if the admin is online (check if live support is active or not).
-exchanges between LR/GDP/PM are also fast from what I heard.
-exchanges from STP to LR are also fast, usually in 1-2 days, because he needs STP approval.

Exchanges from AP to LR is something I never did. But if you want to do then you should be aware that you need to verify yourself in xChanger service to prove the AP account belongs to you. I think this is something required by AP.

GoldexPay- I personally don't have experience with it, but always heard good things from it, so I think it's worth to be mentioned here.

ExtremeExchange- another exchanger I have only good experiences. The admin is the owner of ExtremeSurf monitor and blog.
I used it a few times to exchange from LR to STP (the fees were lower than xChanger) and when StrictPay was falling, because it was one of very few exchangers still accepting it.
I think it only lacks AP to be a "complete" exchanger.

When I used it, exchanges were also fast, but I don't know if this is still the norm because the admin has been quieter on his blog because of personal life options (see here), so it's hard to know if this also affected the speed of the exchanges or not.
I think the best way to know is to email the admin before starting the exchange to see how fast he answers. This way you will have a better idea of how much time (in average) the exchanges will take.

Onlychange and autoconverter- two small services I use mainly to exchange between PM/LR instantly. The fees are not the best, but I like them because are instant.
But keep in mind these don't have a big/considerable reputation like those I mentioned above, so I advise to only use small amounts.

And I think it's everything....all (or nearly all) my experience with e-currencies and exchangers here.

Good opportunity to earn easy money: thevaults.net

2010-08-23T02:50:00.000-07:00

important: free surfer plan is closed, check here.

updated the bat instructions
update2: sometimes the free surfer plan is disabled, so don't worry if one day you go register another account and free surf plan doesn't appear.

Hello folks.
This article is more directed to "newbies" who are looking mainly to find some "easy" money to start investing in this hyip world, without risking their own money.
The "seniors" hyip investors can also try it, but might not like it due to the time you need to spend daily on it.

I still remember when I started with 50$ (lol), and I would love to have at that time a similar opportunity to help me to increase my initial money.
I will cover mainly the "free surfer" plan in this half-baked review, because my main objective is to teach "newbies" a source of money that can help them to start their career in hyip world, but Vaults also offers other high-ROI plans, although I consider those more riskier (because you will be risking your own money, unlike on free surfer plan where you will risk at max 10$).

Now let's start with a bit of story:
I know Vaults since June, but I was a bit afraid to introduce it in my blog because I thought it was on the last steps because they were introducing new plans that disrupted the almost perfect organization they had in plans.

Basically Vaults.net can be considered a high-ROI surf program, because it offers 10x12, 11x13, 12x12...well a considerable number of plans that range from 120% to 144% (paid when the plan expires) final ROI.
What impresses more in this program was the very clever system to promote a forced slow growth and to avoid hit n runners. I have seen many programs in past with systems like 50/50 rule and re-invest bonus, both most of them failed.
In Vaults the system was very clever because it uses your and others investors greed.
You had to start with 10$ plan, and then, when you finished it, you would be allowed to upgrade to 20$ plan (or stay on the same 10$ plan) and so on until you reach a maximum of 1500$ plan.
So all investors had to start with 10$ (or more if you used multiple accounts).
But, as you know...everyone wants always more (greed factor), and this system worked very well to keep reinvestments going on, allowing a gradual growth of the site over the time.
This allowed the survival of the program for a long, long time, the biggest I ever saw for a high-ROI program: at least since December 2009 (talkgold thread), but I heard it is online since May 2009.

Vaults.net is the living proof that a well thought program, even being a high-ROI one, can last very long, despite the "crisis" that happened.
And mainly, it shows admins like Roger (see the article here) that blaming the investors is not the solution. Instead, a good admin, should watch the market conditions and adapt the hyip to it.
Vaults can be an surf program with an advertising side, but it is impossible to sustain the plans it offers only with advertising, so I am sure it has a big Ponzi side, cleverly managed.

Now, in June, Vaults introduced the "investors" plans, that allowed you to jump the "ladder" and being able to invest 100$-500$ right away.
This already caused some concern for me, but the free surfer plan, that pays 0.40$ each day forever concerned me much more, because in my opinion it would drain the funds very quickly.

But, fortunately, Vaults administration is very active, and transformed the "free surfer" plan from a very attractive thing (auto surf 5 seconds each, unlimited number of accounts, 2$ cashout....) to something that can bring money to the site through advertising, because now this plan is manual surf and with 15 seconds for each site, maximum of 10 accounts for each person and 10$ min cashout.
The "tweaked" version of this plan is much better, because it avoided the exploit of it (a person could have 100 accounts without any work because it was auto surfing) and the manual surf make the advertising in the site worth more.

After this introduction, let's talk about the free surfer plan itself.
With this plan, you invest 1$ and you will earn 0.40$ forever, or better, while the site stays online.

Now some important rules:
-you are only allowed to have one plan per account. The script handles this automatically, so you don't have to concern about it;
-you can have a maximum of 10 accounts (you don't need 10 emails, just put anything from your imagination on the following 9 accounts);
-you can only buy one plan each day, in your overall accounts. This mean that you need 10 days to fill 10 accounts with investments (free surfer or other plans);
-you can only request a cashout each day, in your overall accounts. And the minimum is 10$.

Now let's go to the numbers...with 10$, you will earn ~120$ each month (10accounts x 30days x 0.40$), and you can only withdraw after around 25 days, due to the current 10$ minimum.
I prefer to withdraw in a monthly basis, it's easier, and sometimes compensate one day or another I couldn't surf.

How much time you are required each day to surf?
On a straight mode, you need around 10 minutes for each account (40 sites x 15 seconds each). Multiply this by 10, and add the time needed to do logins and you will need around 2hours each day.
I know this sounds a lot, but you can do it in parallel with other activities you are doing online.
But you are in dvdhyip blog, so of course I would teach a trick to diminish the time needed.

You can use multiple browsers and surf various accounts at same time.

Alternative 1
The best browser to do it it's firefox.
However I must warn, if you use FireFox as primary browser, having multiple profiles will affect the normal behavior of FireFox, so I would advise to not do this.
In windows, create a batch file (the easiest way it's to do a text file and then rename it to .bat) and add the following:

@echo off
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0

update: you don't have to place it on FF folder, you can have it in your desktop. What I meant was to make sure the 3rd line (start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p) has your correct FireFox folder, as this is the default folder for Win7/Vista, but you may have it installed on a different folder, and winXP default folder is different, depending on your windows language (if I remember correctly).
To edit the bat, just right-click on it and select "edit", on Win7/Vista. In winXP just open it with notepad, I don't remember well (I no longer use XP), but I think it worked with notepad.

Make sure to place the folder where you have your Firefox installation.
If you are totally unsure about creating a batch file, I uploaded mine here. But make sure you have a up to date antivirus because I heard in past that some hackers changed links in blogs to new links with virus.
Also, before opening the bat file, right-click on it and select "edit" and make sure it only has the code I told above.

Now, after the bat file is done, all you need is to double click on it, create the number of profiles you want are good to go. This way, if you have 10 browsers, and fully commit yourself to just surf, you will be able to surf all 10 accounts in 10-15minutes, depending in your internet connection.

Alternative 2
If you use FF as your main browser, you probably won't want to have strange behavior on it due to multiple accounts conflicts.

So...the alternative is to have multiple different browsers.
For example you can have IE, FF, Safari and Chrome. With Opera I can't login, but the version I use is already 1 year old, so it might be worth to try a newer version.
Of course this alternative is not as good as having 10 FireFox profiles, but with 4 browsers you can already cut your surf time a lot.

If later (after receiving your first row of cashouts) you want to risk some money in investors plan, for example in the 100$ plan, you have to contact support to cancel one of yours free surfer plans, in order to allow you to select a new plan. This way you can keep going with 9 free surfer accounts and 1 investor account.

Remember that this site is as risky as one hyip, despite of being online for a long time. Still, I think that giving 10$ to potentially receive a lot more (120$ each month) it's worth it.
If the site goes down before you are able to cash out (you need at least 25days), you probably will be more pissed of due to the time you spend surfing, than due to the money lost.

If I had to give a score to Vaults.net, it would be definitely 5/5, in the high-ROI scale (not comparable to the others scores in my current list), because it is one of most successful high-ROI program I came across.

If you decide to go for the "investor" plans, remember to treat it like a game, and keep your investments at an affordable level.

Finally

2010-08-21T03:20:00.000-07:00

Finally blog T did a good article.

I personally liked it, because apart from using it to continue to attack "experts" and some programs (the tomatoes farmer analogy is pretty clear lol), it has a good message: treat every program as a ponzi/potential scam.
Basically the message is similar to my "hyips=games" article.

I advise (yes I am giving an advice lol) to go and read the article.

However there are somethings I don't agree:
-why keeping call others ref sharks? We are no longer in 2008-2009. In the year I am, 2010, pretty much all blogs offer RCB. I don't give because I am lazy, but I promote the use of monitors with RCB like I have on right side of my blog.
So it's not "cool" to call others ref sharks when it is barely true nowadays.
-there is a difference between pictures and videos and videos showing admin himself. The later obviously adds more credibility. Xaga videos were a good initiative, but without showing admin face, their credibility was almost none.
-failed to tell NanoMoney was online for 4 years, but 3 of them was almost inactive due to the pretty low returns. This is an important thing.
-why liking to deal with admins like Roger Miller? He is what I call an amateur because failed to see the market conditions (there was a big cloud of fear), and worst, decided to take out AP and STP (both very popular in high ROI hyips due to the increased safety they can provide, although not always)...and then blame the investors. Being straightforward is not enough to be a good admin.
-the gambling part. In order to have success investing in hyip I believe that gambling among different programs (to diversify) is not the way to go, unless you have lot's of luck. I still believe that analysis and research is essential to make better decisions.
Here is an analogy with betting, a thing I do in daily basis. I can just gamble among different matches, but like on hyips, I will be only in profit at end of day if I have luck. Now if I do a basic research and analysis, and chose only matches that fit my criteria, and couple all this with a good money management strategy...I can be in profit in almost all days.
Of course, even with all the research and analysis I still lose in some matches, and this also happens in hyip world (and even stocks and forex worlds).
However you can't expect to start winning right way when you start doing analysis and research. It is a learning process and with time you will earn experience and "fine-tune" the way you do your own research and analysis, using the available tools.
That's why I always advise to start with small amounts of money, the same applies to betting world.

The example he gave, about a tomatoes farmer is good. However the part about bank loan is a bit debatable, because nowadays the banks are no longer that generous, and there are big differences from country to country.

Overall it was a good article, and I am happy this small war incentived blog T to publish educational articles. At least we have some improvements.

Advices: good or bad?

2010-08-21T02:30:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, today I am feeling with good mood to write, so I decided to do a article about advices, because it has been a hot topic since last week, mainly because there are different opinions about: some say it is a good thing, and others say it is a bad thing.

So the ultimate question is "Advices: good or bad?"
My opinion: both, without doubt!

Let's start with the bad side.
One of main reasons the advices can be bad is if people take them almost blindly, like "ok, if he tells it is good to go, then I will try it".
This is not the correct way to follow advices folks, because this way you are not learning and building you knowledge about how and where to invest.

And then, depending on the person who writes the advices, the advices can be double bad, because unfortunately, there are people who write wonders about determined programs just to lure people and build a good downline.
Fortunately I have seen less and less of this among blogs, but I still receive some nice spam emails telling "take a look at this program, truly great, I already placed there 1.000$, please join here".

---------off-topic------------
An area where this is still happens a lots of time (praising a program like if it was the best thing ever since sliced bread) is MLMs, matrices and cyclers.....promising financial freedom and similar crap. But the people that like to promote them fail to tell most of them are not much more than an organized ponzi system (people must join, and pay, in order to upline receive money). Sure some offer some services to tell "you are buying the service and it's not guaranteed that you will make money", but most are still a ponzi, in my opinion.
A decent MLM should not promise the financial heaven, and not force people to pay to join, but instead offer a commission for each product/service sold and commissions when your downline also sells something.
---------end of off-topic-----------

Now the good side.
From my personal experience I can tell you that advices can be good, and play a significant role in my daily contact with hyips.

How?

Let me explain: when I see a well known blog to me, that gives advices to help people making money (this requires you to know a bit about the blogger), giving an advice about a program, telling it is a good opportunity, I just don't join it blindly.
Instead I think "ok, if he tells it is good, maybe I should check it (or check again if I already saw that program)", and then I do my own analysis and research in order to see if the program is truly a good opportunity or not.

The same thing happens when one of my readers ask me for a review/opinion about a certain program. The reader tells "it looks good", and I think "ok, let's take a look, maybe we have something here".

What I mean is: advices can be good, if you take them as an incentive to do a deeper research about that program, and always taking the advice as an opinion to help you to build your own opinion, and not to make it your opinion.

I hope you take all my advices/opinions/suggestions with this article in mind. I don't want you to follow what I say without thinking about it. What I want is to help you, and my advices/opinions are just a "tool" to help you making your own decisions.
And have in mind that sometimes I am wrong, that's why I insist to have your own opinion. It wouldn't be the first time a reader tell me I am wrong due to this or that ;) sometimes I miss important details.

AMF new videos

2010-08-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

I forgot to include AMF in yesterday's news. Honestly I knew there was something missing on it, as it felt "empty".
And this morning I noticed what was missing....referring AMF new videos.

AMF admin, Tish, as he promised (to continuing update us with videos from the farms), brought a couple of new videos:

4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJXxIbA6gv8 This is another farm.
5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weig4sDwFZ0 this second farm and work being done

I liked the 2nd video because it shows that Tish is not standing still, but expanding the business into new farms.
There is no doubt that these videos (and the previous vids) add a lot of credibility to AMF, comparing to others hyips we see around in hyip world.
Also Tish always said he is available for meetings, so anyone wanting to deposit considerable amounts should try to meet him first. Nothing like knowing personally the person that will use our money.

Finally, just want to remind you that even real businesses (and also Forex and Stocks investments) can face problems/losses, so keep always the investments under an "affordable" amount.
For example, remember PMAForex, it had some serious losses weeks ago, showing that real things also carry risk, not just ponzis.

News and hyip h2h

2010-08-17T07:08:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, here I am again to bring some news from the programs I have investments/monitor.
I first want to apologize, because I had time yesterday to do this update, but I went to bad really early. I have been feeling a bit strange for almost a week, with fever at the end of the day, and feel really tired all day.
Hopefully it is nothing, but tomorrow I will try to go to doctor to check what's going on.

Now let's move to the hyip world.

Fenix-Trust: now has the Chinese language available. It is a good move to impress chinese investors, and might help to keep the current growth going on:

Convenience in use of Fenix Trust investment service it's what we aim to, doing our job. That is now the interface of Fenix Trust is available online not only in English but in Chinese as well.

Now all Chinese-speaking users can use the site with a comfort. Probably this step will help some users to discover a convenient, comprehensible and profitable investment project Fenix Trust.

In the future we plan to develop our online project and regularly introduce the changes offered by our users. Want to make Fenix Trust better? Contact Support service and we will consider your proposal and probably bring it to life since the business of Fenix Trust traders gets better than expected, profits grow and very soon we plan to become a leader on the online investment market.

Hyip Selections

Ok, I have been keeping an eye in some programs and I think it's time to expand my investments a bit.
I was looking at 4, but I am only willing to choose 2, so I decided to do a head vs head.
Keep in mind that the arguments shown her can be used as advices/suggestions/my opinion to help your decisions, because unlike blog T tells, I believe most of my readers come to my blog to see my opinion. At least it's the impression I get from the emails I get :)
Of course these advices/opinions are only to help you build your decision/opinion and not to follow blindly, because doing that won't help you to improve the way you invest in hyips.

Vintech vs FXmonger
Ok, the decision here is a bit hard, mainly because I haven't done a review for anyone of these.
Vintech has a better "wow" factor than FXmonger, but honestly, both look very good at first sight.
The content in Vintech appears to be original (checked several parts in google), and the same for Fxmonger.
Both are well provided in security and script field.
Both are well served in terms of currencies accepted, the FXmonger offers more option, but Vintech accepts AP, a well known KYC processor.

The risk/reward ratio, for small deposits (<100$) FXmonger has the advantage because of 30days plan. But for bigger deposits, 200+$ Vintech has an upper hand because the rates are a bit better, meaning lower time to get your principal back. On the current growth, both are doing fine, with a not fast growth (although FXmonger is growing faster), and plenty of room to grow:

So, as you see it's not a easy decision. I decided to go VinTech route mainly because I have already FXmonger covered in my investment in LionsSociety (and FXmonger was part of this week M&S list).

Mutual Treaty vs SafeDepositary

These two are much easier to compare, because I have reviewed already (Mutual here and Safe here).
As I already said, both are pretty much in the same level.
Safe wins on overall design and content, while Mutual has better plans for long run.
Safe has bankwires, and Mutual has AP and STP;
Mutual has better ref commissions (because they are lower lol);
Both are well covered in security and script;
Both have good risk/reward ration, with Mutual having a slight hedge here.
But the risk/reward is not considering the popularity growth due to lack of Alexa data (both are pretty new).

However I already have some concerns on Mutual side, because it already used "MNO card", and you know that I don't like much hyips doing this at launch.
Now let's see how this will affect the growth, it will depend on how much it is praised or not in the review.
But Safe can also decide to do the same....

Here I will go for Safe Depositary, because Mutual was also covered by LionsSociety, and using MNO at beginning is something I don't like much (but sometimes it doesn't "damage" the program with fast growth).

Since this program is still new, the deposit won't be as big, and I will invest more depending how things go. For, example I did the same for FenixTrust, because in beginning things were still a bit uncertain, but now look pretty good in terms of growth.

I hope this info helps you.

Another small review: Mutual Treaty

2010-08-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

warning: payments pending reported!

Hello folks, once again I am here to bring a small review of a program requested by one of my readers.
Since I find the program interesting enough, and the review is also decent enough to be here, I decided to publish it, to share the info with all my readers.

Once again, all links are without ref link, because I am not a member of this program. So, I advise to seek a upline that gives ref back ;)

Here it is:

Plans: at first glance, the rate offered might seem to be too high for long run (2-2.4%, resulting in 10-12% weekly), but the principal is not returned, making it more sustainable, and mainly, will avoid large withdrawals when plans expire. And since all plans last 100 business days, the total ROI will be 200-240%, not too excessive for something done in 20weeks, or 140 calendar days.
Some programs in past, like Saza, which gave 8-10% weekly forever lasted very long, so Mutual Treaty plans should be sustainable on long run because they don't last forever...as long there is a positive growth and "decent" admin.
I just don't understand if the compound is available as optional or forced in bigger plans, but it is not much important because most people will join the first plan.

Design and content- the design itself is good and attractive, but we never know if it was copied. The content is a bit let down, because the about us page is everything but original. Check here and here, and see if there are similarities.

Company incorporation- they try hard to look genuine, and while this doesn't prove it is real at all, it shows the admin is doing efforts to sell his "fish". But what really caught my eye was the fact the incorporation was done in November 2009, showing the project wasn't rushed, but probably well thought, and was waiting for a good timing to launch.

Security and script- the script is NeverSay. The site offers SSL connection, but it's not forced. There is a Comodo Seal to assure you are on the right site and not on a cheap copy. Interestingly these seals were popular last year, but now we don't find it many times. I heard that Comodo and Verisign made the verifications more strict due to the large numbers of hyips/scams they got associated with, in past.
The host is the well known Dragonara, a very good host and DDoS protection provider.

Payment processors- LR, PM, STP and AP. Pretty much all 4 currencies most used in hyips. Personally I like to see a program with AP and STP, as they offer a bit more safety than LR/PM, but are also known for blocking accounts. So I checked their AP and STP account, and both are in name of Mutual Treaty and not those using strange names (this usually happens in high-ROI games), so maybe the odds to get blocked are low.

Risk vs reward- considering you will be joining the first plan, you will need 10weeks to get principal back, or around 2 months and half.
Right now it's hard to determine what admins plans are, if a fast game, or a slow pace game. However it isn't too far fetched to think it should survive till Christmas without sweating much, unless the admin decide to do a hard launch now that can affect severely this hyip's life.

Now, if I would have to give a final score, it would be 3/5, because I think it is on the same level of Safe Depositary (which I reviewed yesterday), when you look to the overall picture of both.
Both don't have a possible "forecast" yet; Safe has better site design and content in my opinion, but Mutual has better plans because of no principal back; Safe has bank wires, and Mutual has AP and STP; the rest of features are almost the same: Dragonara, SSL,...
And mainly: both have similar good risk/reward for now.

So, as you see the level of both is around the same, but of course we never know which one will be a success, can be both, or none of them.
As usually, invest wisely, and maintain things in a affordable level.

Small review: Safe Depositary

2010-08-13T03:38:00.000-07:00

note: after all, RRPs earn 20% more ref commission and not 20%. The who asked for the review just told me he confirmed with the support team.

Hello folks, yesterday I got a request to do a review about this program. As I told to this reader, my "full" review are a bit time-consuming, so I decided to write a small review to this reader by email.
But it turns out that the review is quite "acceptable" to be published, and I think this way I could already give my opinion about this program to all my readers.

So, let's recycle the Safe Depository small review:

Plans: the plans offer a very decent return, even for small investors (1.6% daily for 150 business days), but shouldn't give the principal back to help program longevity.

Design and content: well the design is very good a professional, I just hope they are not copying anyone. The content, after some google searchs, appears to be original, which is a good thing.

Security and script: the script appears to be customized and has some nice features like charts on backoffice and a kind of cryptocard for more security. The script was familiar to me, and the reader who asked me for the review also told me it was similar to the scripts used by fxstar and Alpha-money. This doesn't mean it is the same team behind Safe Depositary (although increase the possibility), but maybe the programmer is the same.
The host is Dragonara, well known for its almost non-existent down-times. And forced SSL is present, improving security.

Payment processors: LR, PM and Bank Wires. I would like to have at least STP or AP (maybe STP, because AP has been more strict by blocking accounts).
On the other side, it offers Bank Wires, which usually is a sign of quality (not all care to do the effort to accept it). However you must verify your account in order to use Bank Wires, and you know...sharing personal documents with hyips is never a good idea.

Referral commisions: here is something I don't like. The commissions are too big (8% is too much, let alone the multi-level and the 9.6% for RPP). This can hurt the cashflow a bit on long run.

Risk vs reward: considering you will be joining the first plan, you will need around 13 weeks to be in profit (1.6x5x13) or 91 calendar days. So it's 3 months.
It's too early to try any kind of forecast. But 3 months is still before Christmas, so at this moment maybe the risk vs reward makes it worth the bet.

But there is a trick you can do to have your principal back faster: use a monitor with refback, and use the big ref commission to your side.
I checked its "rate us" list, and there is list4hyip there. It offers RCB, and is usually fast processing it (I already used it in past).
This way you can add 8% or more to your return right on beginning, lowering the days needed to be in profit to around 80 calendar days (~11weeks).
And if there is any of these RCB monitors becoming a RRP, it would be even better, with 9.6% right on beginning....but I wouldn't count on it because of the minimum of 500$ to became a RRP.

If i would rate this program, I would give it 3/5 for now. The commissions are really big, the plans with current rates shouldn't give principal back, but these rates also play to our side because it means we need less days to be in profit.
Apart from these, the program has some quality (above the average), and the end the risk/reward doesn't appear to be bad.

But...some experienced people say all this analysis is useless, so you have just lost your time by reading this review lol.

Remember to always not invest more than you should. Investing amounts we can lose without sweat will make you less anxious and somehow things will be better (don't ask me why, but it happens, maybe because we are more relaxed, resulting in better decisions).

note: all links don't have any ref link. As I said before, I only place the ref link in programs I am already an investor. If you like the program, instead of joining without upline, I recommend to use a RCB monitor ;)

Urgent information

2010-08-11T01:49:00.001-07:00

Hello people, as I expected my last article brought some disputes into my shout-box.

But I would like to tell a few things:
-I ask all my readers to refrain themselves from insulting MNO and its readers. There is no use on it, and in the end people won't take you seriously.
Attack with arguments, not insults, like I "tried" in my article.

-I don't want to start any kind of blog war. I tried, really tried, to remain silent about this, but you know how I am...always giving my opinion about everything.
I did the article because I "felt" the attack included me (I am one of those who use largely Alexa trends, although not the only one).
But mainly, Paul attack had so many contradictions (isn't the security and script important? From his reviews I thought it was,...and other examples).

I hope Mr Paul don't reply to my article, so we can end all this. And even if he replies, unless he contradicts himself a lot again, I will try to remain silent so we can end this.

Remember: avoid to insult others (like the MNO reader that appeared in my box) in discussions. There is no use to act like that, it just fuels more insults.

Quick update about BE

2010-08-07T02:58:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I noticed I forgot to mention that the new plan of BestEthanol pays a variable return of 0.4-2.2%
This isn't something new, because in the older script and domain I noticed there were already days with 0.4%, that were concerning me a bit, because if during the life of my deposits I had half of days paying 0.4%, it would lower a lot the final ROI.
So the biggest difference now is that your deposit expires when reaches 180%, whatever the returns are being great, or low, like 0.4%.

I think it was a good decision, because it increases the flexibility to admin and the sustainability of the program.
And also makes it more fair to investors, because previously, depending on the time a deposit was made, some members could reach higher levels of final ROI.

I am going now to update the review and the description in my list.

News

2010-08-04T16:54:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, things have been a bit quiet among the programs I have deposits/monitor, with just one exception, Optimum Pride.
But let's give a quick look at others before talking about it.

Lions Society- this week the insurance fund gave 2.71% profits, a bit higher than last week (2.63%), as expected, because none of the programs in recent Movers and Shakers list has fallen so far.

Also, ShareHolders received 2.85% profits from their shares.

BestEthanol- I think I read on Monday that the new script and host migration would happen in 48h. So if any downtime happens we already know the reason.
Let's see if this happens smoothly and without problems.

Now about Optimum Pride, I really was surprised when I received this update yesterday:

This is our first newsletter. Some changes have been made on Optimum Pride. 1. All free members will be deleted after some time. Make sure you upgrade your account. 2. We decrease our minimum investment to only $10 (Standard Plan). 3. Starter Plan will be deleted. Members who already invested on this plan will still receive their earnings. 4. Optimum Plan has been created. (103% after 1 Calendar Day). You can see the details here: https://www.optimumpride.com/optimumplan.php

Well, I will be honest, I didn't checked that link (maybe because I was chocked) because it looked like a new "plan", and I checked the site to make sure....and there it also say it is a "plan".
This quickly concerned me a lot because it would render all bigger plans totally useless, and people on them wouldn't be happy at all. And would bring sustainability problems

But thanks to comments in my shout-box that referred this "plan" to be similar to an "lottery" I got intrigued and finally clicked in the above link to see if there was more info:

If you notice, you have 50:50 chances to get 103% after 1 calendar day. Even number batches will be placed on the Standard Plan in order to protect the Optimum Plan itself. (....)

For example, you fund $100 to your wallet. The last digit of your transaction batch is 3. We will place your money on the Optimum Plan (103% after 1 calendar day). If your last digit is 8, then 60% of your money which is $60 ($100 x 60%) will be placed on the Standard Plan. This will earn you (total ROI) $124.8 at the end of the plan term (daily cashout). That’s it. Simple and powerful.

So after reading it, my worries about sustainability are gone. However, it raised me some concerns with new members of the site, because if you access it through main page, you won't see much info about it, and it really seems to be a "plan" like others, which could mislead these new members (so far you it seems you only have info about it if you go to the news page).
However this also won't be a problem because in order to try your luck with this plan, you have to:

Write down “Optimum Plan” and your username in your memo when you make a spend.

To summary:
-you have now an option to try your luck:
-either have luck and see your money deposited in this "103% after 1 calendar" day plan,
-or have bad luck and see your principal reduced to 60% of its original size, and see it going to the 0.6% for 180 business days plan, to receive a total ROI of 124.8% or a total profit of 24.8%.

My opinion...I think its risk vs reward ratio is not enough to give it a shot. Don't forget that if you have bad luck, you will have to wait around 180 business days to be in profit (you have to wait till you have the 60% principal back).

It now all depends in how hyip market embraces this idea, as it works as a double edged knife:
-might create some buzz around the program, increase popularity, and even deposits (some people will probably like to try their luck).

but also can bring some negative aspects:
-makes them look desperate to have attention;
-that can damage their "professional" look it first gave to us.

Well, let's see how people think about it, because it's the hyip market (investors) who will dictate which of these edges will be prevalent.

Other news

Ok, I finally decided to make the rotating banners official.
The final decision was 4 slots, and 20$/month for each. I think it gives a good exposure and have a fair price, and in my opinion it is a better bet for long term advertising because allow a longer advertising time (2 months here has the same or less price than fixed banners).

AMF review

2010-08-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Note: if you want to know a bit more about the past of AMF and older investors, check HyipBlogger review.

Hello folks, I finally managed to temporary fix my router with some wires to bypass the on/off button. It turns out the problem was this easy. Later today I will try to solder the wires to make the "fix" permanent.

So, here is am finally to bring the promised (long ago) review of AMF 1989.

Starting with the plan offered (yes, only one):
-variable up to 25% each month, minimum 10$.

One important thing about the plan is that your deposit is not invested in the first 15days, so you will earn your first profits after ~45days, and then in a monthly basis.
This is because of their AP business verified account, that only allows to withdraw new money after 14days (check here).

Another important point (that I like) is that you are free to withdraw your principal at any time, with the same 15days of waiting.

Support feedback: √√√ (+3) email, tickets, sms, and he even phones you. What else do you want?

Design and content: √ (+1) the design is clearly old-school, the kind I used to do when I was still in the IT course. Still it isn't unattractive and it's easy to navigate across the site.
About the content, everything seems to be original.

Script and security: √ (+1.5) my first impression is that AMF takes security seriously: there is a DDoS protection page and the script was annoying enough to force me to use a very long password with letters and numbers.
The script seems to be customized. The site has forced SSL connection provided by Equifax and it's hosted in a dedicated server provided by Ace-host.net.
Frankly it is the first time I hear about this host provider, but it seems to use hardware DDoS protection and has some nice servers listed (although I don't know which AMF uses).

Payment Processors: √ (+1) Officially AMF accepts LR and AP. PM and GDP are the same thing as LR, so they don't miss too much. Don't forget its AP account is business verified to offer financial services, something rare in this industry.
Also, Ritish said me, in past, that other processors could be accepted, so if you are one of those not using LR or AP, contact Ritish to see what can be done.

Sustainability and longevity potential
Well, I don't know how to treat AMF here. It appears to be more than a regular ponzi, especially if we compare to others hyips.
But we never know the truth, unless we are the admins lol. So AMF falls in that "gray area".

Supporting the idea of AMF being "something more":
-the program returned instead of just running away and return with a new name/site/design/lie.
-there are some videos, showing the admin explaining what AMF does:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsNkGD5WvLo follow up on the micro farm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrX2IGxOV_U The other farm we have we will follow up in a week to show the progress of setup
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29eR3LSwZUY this is clear as you can see shops at the end and live fish prices.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJXxIbA6gv8 This is another farm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weig4sDwFZ0 this second farm and work being done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLcb1F35-78 PART ONE THE WAIT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUiCUiv9GyE pt 2 PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBkqTJDI02Y pt 3 THE FISH FRIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw_ABZyLQu4 Trip to the farm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBL5FDMwEug Next Project

As usual, even if it is real, we should always treat as a game (to avoid the temptation invest more than we should). As I said at beginning of this review, AMF already had some bumps on its online life, showing us that a real business can also suffer unforeseen situations.

Treating it as a pure ponzi, its Alexa shows a slow growth on reach graph, meaning AMF is getting more and more popular (although very slowly).

So for these two topics I will give √ (+1), as it seems to be more than a ponzi, and even treating it as a ponzi things look good on the growth side with still plenty of room to improve.

To end the review, the final score for AMF1989 will be 4.5/5.
For me it's on the same level of BestEthanol, maybe a bit better (and don't forget BE admin already met Lea in Hong Kong, something also unusual in hyip industry).

And the option to leave at any time is really attractive for members, allowing to jump out in case you feel insecure or something.

As usual, invest wisely, and avoid to put more than you can afford in any online (and offline) venture :)

Connection problems

2010-07-31T03:04:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, it seems it won't be today that I publish the AMF review....
My router decided to take permanence holidays yesterday (you might have noticed the lack of my answers in the shout-box).
At first I thought it was just temporary because it wasn't the first time my laptop didn't recognized the router or if recognize couldn't connect to it.

But this morning I decided to check and was turned off, it just doesn't give any signal of life and AC/DC converter is working.
Well, I will try my lack of electronic skills and open it to see if the problem is something obvious (it is out of warranty anyway).

I got online using the mobile internet my cellphone carrier offered, but this isn't cheap, 1€/hour due to being prepaid (since it was an offer I accepted because of no contract and would be useful for these situations).
So this connection is not ideal to stay all day online :)

Finally...all exams done

2010-07-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

As the title says: finally :)

There isn't any news across the sites I have in my list (either from personal list or monitoring service).
But it's better to have no news than bad news, right?

About my "blogs partners" list, I decided to remove HyipCritics, because the it wasn't updated since April.
And on its place I added HyipBlogger, a nice blog I discover recently, or better, he discovered me because he invited me to the upcoming blog Carnival that will happen soon on his blog.

I recommend to take a look at this blog, and mainly at the Walk-through section, because there is some good information published there.

I am now back to my work routine, so I don't know if today I will be able to publish the promised (long ago) review of AMF. Probably tomorrow.

News

2010-07-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, don't expect too much from me this week (mainly reviews), because I am back to University to do my last exam (finally), so I need to focus on it.

Still, I managed some time to publish the recent news.

BestEthanol- it is planning to change the host due to late HushHosting problems, and it will take the same opportunity to upgrade the script. Usually I don't like big changes because of the problems that can arise during the change of scripts, but I am a bit optimistic because BE is taking a conservative approach by opening a new domain for the new host to help a smooth migration.

We suffer large difficulties with our host the last few
weeks. Payments are all processed.
We decide exchange the host and improve the script at the same
time. No downtime is expected as we are setting up a alternative
domain for the new host. Please be informed we additionally modify
the benefit option. The variable interests are now from 0.4%-2%
daily. During harvest the sum will be stronger as throughout the
seeding operation. Our new script permits to reward every member
until he received 180% of benefit. This is settled daily Monday-
Friday among the benefit variable from 0.4%-2.0% until the total of
180% are obtained.

All monitoring services, please correct the listing accordingly and
renew your referral link as soon we send you the new link in the
new script.
There will be no downtime or no delay in settlements throughout the
switch, and we are redirecting our old domain to the new domain as
soon the procedure is executed.

Wbwso- I think it is fair to share the answer from wbwso about the FSA warning. It's good to see its admin is taking proactive measures, showing he is passionate:

We recently stop the internal transfer function since this was in breach of FSA rules (we could be seen as a payment processor and for that we do not have a license).

We are also working on removing the “add funds to account” and all purchases will have to be made direct via the payment processor since this is also one thing we are in breach with the FSA regulations.

We are in contact with the FSA regarding this, and buying-selling-administrating webites and domains is not a regualted service, so it is a matter of removing the functions that make us breach the rules. This is in progress.# Also you can check directly with the goverments own website that we are correctly registered, companieshouse.gov.uk, use the webcheck function and search for WBwso Ltd.

Also, here is a link to mmg forum, showing a lengthy answer from admin to all questions raised in mmg discussion (it's a good read): http://www.moneymakergroup.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=237199&view=findpost&p=6120484

For me: the rules are still the same, treat every online venture as a "game", and hyips as ponzis. That's why my longevity and forecast analysis are done always thinking at the worst.

For wbwso, the FSA warning doesn't mean it is a ponzi or not, it just mean it doesn't comply with the rules. In my previous article I was just talking about the negative impact it could bring (it appears it was lower than expected).

New update about Wbwso

2010-07-24T04:27:00.000-07:00

Just some minutes ago I published I was planning to invest in Wbwso, due to the "opportunity window" still alive, as I said in my small review.

However, during my daily blogs surf, I found that Wbwso "opportunity window" has been spoiled by FSA, thanks to ThinkPink monitor.

The warning is not new: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Doing/Regulated/Law/pdf/wbwso.pdf , and was issued in May, and checking the Alexa trend, it seems that it hasn't affected the growth of Wbwso.
But it is hard to say if many people knew about it or not. Judging that only now I saw this information, it seems pretty few people knew about it.

This probably will have a negative impact in Wbwso.

And then, there is the phishing email....that I gave low importance due to its "cheap" header. Sometimes we see these kind of emails originating from the site domain itself, which corresponds to a bigger probability of scamming attempt from the admin (they use the usual excuse of being hacked, but I suspect most of times it was them that sent the email lol).

About Wbwso, I am not sure if the email was sent from the administration, because it was sent to wrong email that is not associated with Wbwso....

However I agree with Paolo...everytime we see a phishing email, the site mentioned on it collapses soon (although there are exceptions, of course).

So, what's the conclusion?
Don't know, because:
-the FSA warning so far had no impact in Wbwso growth trend. BUT I suspect almost none of investors/potential investors knew about it.
For me it doesn't changes much because I always treated Wbwso as a game.
But this can affect the growth of Wbwso, leading to faster collapse (when treating it as a ponzi).

-the phishing emails are always a sign of warning, but in this case I am not sure if it was really sent from Wbwso.

Anyway, I suspect the FSA warning can affect Wbwso longevity, spoiling the "opportunity window" I saw when doing the mini-review.

So I will pass it, and will use the money I saved to place in Lions Society to compensate the last investments I did (I said I would try to have equilibrated amounts between my own strategy and Lea's strategy).

Please note that I am not telling to avoid Wbwso like a plague, but to have in mind all this if you are pretending to invest into it. And we don't know if all this will have a significant impact in Wbwso, it might make no difference at all.
It's just me, that like to be always a bit conservative when placing my money in hyips :)

News

2010-07-24T02:27:00.001-07:00

Hi Folks, here are a bit of news for now. I expect to be able to bring you later today the promised Lions Society review.

Fenix-Trust: hyipnews.com made them a video explaining how the site works. The video itself is good, and its spoken English is easy to understand.
This is surely a creative way to advertise an hyip, and I think hyips could use this idea to help promoting their site:

We are glad to present you video review which agreed to make the administrator of the hyipnews.com

In this video review you can see how is investor area working inside and main functionality of our investors platform, also learn basic features of investment in our company.

Just click here to play review

Thank you for your interest in our company, hope you enjoy this video and other all other corporate news.

Wbwso: ~~I am planning to add an investment into it next week~~. Like I told in my "mini-review", there is still a good opportunity window right now. I am just waiting to have a bit more funds and exchange them into AP to equilibrate my LR/AP ratio of investments.

But the main reason I am placing Wbwso in this article it's the phishing email floating around lately:

Thank You for Joining with Wbwso!

Your Bonus Offers will be emailed to you shortly once we accepted your confirm.
confirmation for accepted bonus now! (<--phishing link here)
This is a manual Process and may take upto 72 hours.
If you should have any problems or questions please send us an email

Regards

Client Accounts
WBwso LTD.
No19 Moulton Park, Office Village
Sciroco Close
Northampton
Northamptonshire
NN3 6AP
England, UK
accounts@wbwso.com
www.wbwso.com

Registered in England and Wales. Company registration No. 06751383

Confidentiality and Privacy Notice

This email and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for the person
to whom they are addressed. They may contain privileged and confidential information.
If you are not the intended recipient you must not read, copy or distribute
this message or its attachments, and you must not discuss its contents or take
any action in reliance on its contents.

Unauthorised use, disclosure or copying is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.
If you have received this email in error, please contact us immediately
by replying to the sender, and delete it and any attachments from your computer.
Thank you.

Do NOT click any link provided by this email. For me it was easy to spot this as a phishing email even before opening it...because the dumb person behind it sent to my email that is not attached to my Wbwso account.
But the email looks very well forged, usually we see the "contract email"...but this one was more elaborated to look genuine, apart from the links lol.
Also, the header tell it isn't from wbwso, but from musicho1@box486.bluehost.com.

Private Fx-club: I received an email from Kevin saying he was trading for the site http://realfx-investment.com. This is really strange, and I even compared the email header with previous emails to make sure it wasn't a faked email trying to promote this hyip.

I don't know what Kevin is aiming with this, considering he barely has time to give proper support on his site, and backing up an hyip can damage his image.
Here is my opinion (taken from an answer sent to one of my readers):

The site doesn't seem to be anything special (=cheap), and it's a bit strange because the rates are simply unsustainable. I mean, Kevin has been giving something like 5-15% each month for its members (although I have not followed the profits lately), and there they give 20-25%, fixed rate?
Something is not right....and why should a person invest with Kevin, if David gives much better rates?

The site seems to be a bit fishy, and it's strange to see Kevin promoting it. Even if it has real forex behind it, I highly doubt they will manage to pay those fixed profits on long run.

Optimum Pride: this site was recently added to my monitoring service. Two days ago I was contacted by the admin asking the advertising prices, and surprisingly, even after I telling them that the rotating banner was a great choice because of it's exposure/$ ratio, the admin bought 4 months of advertising in the current banner spot.
Maybe it is trying to impress us, or it's confident about its longevity.

The site itself looks good and professional, offers forced SSL, dedicated server, Koddos protection, and NeverSay script that was hard to identify at first glance, but spotted due to its well known withdrawal page.
Basically it looks better than average, and the rates offered (0.4-1.5%) are inline with sites that lasted a good time (IncoForex for example, although Inco was overall better than OP).

But, as I said in my shout-box, it's early to tell how the performance/growth/longevity of Optimum Pride will be, because it depends on how the market accepts it. But there is already a good point in OP: it launched in the right time, because if it manages to grow now, it will probably see its popularity increasing nicely in September, when the low season should be a thing of past.
I will do a review in ~2 weeks, when we have some preliminary data about its launch and growth.

Other news

MNO vs hyip.com dipute:
As I mentioned before, I will maintain neutral about these kind of stuff, and in my opinion this is a dispute were both sides have some guilty, and probably was caused by some misunderstood by both parties in past, and now they are like two little children fighting with each other (I hope they don't get offended).

Hyipnews,com released another article about this, with the Paul version of the story.

Sportarbs saga

2010-07-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, sorry for not publishing anything yesterday, but I was a bit tired after the work.

This week I believe I will be somewhat busy with the work, so I don't know if I will be able to churn out some reviews.

Sooo, Let's start today's session of news.

As you know, SportArbs was a decent hyip that lived a considerably long life, specially if we keep in mind it returned the principal in ~42days.
It even launched a site with a search engine for Arbs, that almost convinced me that they had a real business (one more reason I now am very skeptical of every online venture :) ).
And, if were a member of it, you are aware they are NOT paying since March, or something around that date...and made countless promises they would be back in May-Jun, and then giving more and more excuses to not return.

Now it seems they start a war with PerfectMoney, each one accusing the other.

This is to address the "information" that Sportarbs has been spreading lately.

Perfect Money has terminated the Sportarbs account due to an obvious fraudulent
scheme utilized by Sportarbs. While the account of Sportarbs once had a significant
balance; its own customers remained unpaid. Slightly later, the funds have been
withdrawn to a bank account. All of this happened before the Sportarbs account has
been blocked.

Perfect Money has blocked the account once it was clear that Sportarbs are withdrawing
the funds to their own bank account, instead of paying to the customers. This company
knew about their obligations to the clients, yet they chose to avoid paying.

At this point the account of Sportarbs is empty (Please see below), as almost all the
funds have been withdrawn a month prior to the account termination.

The reason for termination of the account is to prevent you from transferring funds to
Sportarbs, and as a result, losing funds. You can see that there is no balance at that
account that could be used by SportArbs to make a refund.

Perfect Money Finance Corp. has fulfilled all of its obligations before Sportarbs.
All Sportarbs's bank transfer withdrawal requests have been fulfilled and there is no
outstanding obligations to Sportarbs on our part.

Sportarbs's bank account:
Sportarbs International Corporation
Corner Eyre and Hutson St. Suite 102
Belize City, Belize

Bank account number: CY18011000121325000919619115
USB Bank PLC (SWIFT:UNVKCY2N)
Nicosia
Cyprus

Sportarbs's Perfect Money account:
https://perfectmoney.com/public_view.html?id=923423

The purpose of "information" that is being spread by Sportarbs is to avoid responsibility
for its own actions, or more precisely, inaction. At the same time, we at Perfect Money,
have taken all possible measures to minimize your losses.

We recommend you to contact authorities as soon as possible on this matter. Perfect Money
will assist the international and national law enforcement agencies to bring this matter
to justice.

About SportArbs operations:

Sportarbs is a classic Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation
that pays returns to investors from money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from
any actual profit earned. This kind of schemes are bound to collapse sooner or later as
they constantly require new investors to pay the profits for the previous ones. This
collapse is happening now.

Why is SportArbs a ponzi scheme:

- New deposits were used to pay for the old ones (obvious from the behavior on the account)
- No deposits of profit from Sportarbs.
- Unrealistic profits
- Numerous complaints received from unpaid investors while Sportarbs account was active.

Sportarbs will surely try to point the blame at anyone without providing evidence and details
in regard to their statements. This is in line with behavior of a Ponzi scheme operator.
The bottom line here is that Sportarbs are in possession of your money, you have made deposits
to their account and they are responsible to refund you upon your request.

Perfect Money is a payment system. Online Payments is our business. Should we receive a deposit
from Sportarbs the money will be transferred to your accounts immediately.

Obviously there is no such thing as "Stabilization Fund" in our possession, just as I strongly
doubt that there is such fund at all.

It looks like Sportarbs intend to continue attracting new funds and new clients. Chances that
they will fulfill their obligations are illusionary at best, particularly before the new
clients. Please be careful.

Copy of this official statement is available at
http://perfectmoney.com/official_sportarbs.txt

Here is the answer from SportArbs:

Unreliable 'payment system' Perfect Money. Dragonara - an unreliable service vendor.

Giving a splendid investment opportunity, we staked on a rapidly developing and convenient payment system Perfect Money. We chose this particular payment system for payments to our clients due to multiple factors. Among them:
- Multilanguage interface and clients support;
- work with offshore companies;
- 24/7 available web-site of the payment system;
- no negative experience of other companies using PM for payments to their clients.

We started to accumulate a stabilization fund to be secured against any situations of stress. This stabilization fund was placed on a Perfect Money account. This was considered before the most safe location for stabilization fund as the money was taken care - as we considered before - by financial experts.

As the stabilization fund has been accumulating and the work went well, Perfect Money was happy with everything. When we started the reform to improve the quality of our services and we required significant amounts from our stabilization fund, we started to withdraw some part of our funds at Perfect Money to our corporate bank account. Then Perfect Money stated that our business is unfair and we don't pay money to our investors. However, all of you know that we started a reform and all of you know that any reform requires money.

Perfect Money locked our accounts and notified that all money will be distributed among investors. We have no idea of basis on which they decided to distribute money. And we absolutely don't understand how a payment system may behave so arbitrary. This is nothing else but an arbitrariness, as there is neither court decision, nor negotiations with our investors, nor anything else.

Obviously, that Perfect Money is a non-liquid company due to some reasons, like:
- internal problems of Perfect Money resulting in excessive expenses,
- locking of Perfect Money accounts by banks, with which this payment system cooperates;
and so on.

Perfect Money can't announce these problems in public as they will directly show their non-liquidity. That's why they chose to lock the some accounts in order to recover their liquidity. This is a very dangerous trend.

Recently Dragonara locked our server and made a redirect to a page saying that we don't fulfill our liabilities, and that we allegedly withdraw the money from GDP and PM accounts to our bank account.

There are two regular questions:
1) How PM can know what we do with our GDP account?
2) If this is our stabilization fund, we have a right to withdraw money to our bank account, don't we?

PM wrote bullshit just to put up a smoke screen. You may ask them these two questions if you want.

The amount of stabilization fund at Perfect Money will definitely suffice to return all initially invested money and profit to all investors, who made their deposits via PM. However, the Perfect Money is likely to return you initially invested money only, as they didn't declare their intention to get the information from us regarding the profit of every investor.

We expect, that Perfect money, a payment company, which is so honest and careful to the clients, will return the money to everybody with no exceptions. In this regard we reset all accounts in our system that were replenished via Perfect Money. This doesn't refer to accounts replenished via GDP(!!!)

That's why ask all your questions, relating to return of your money, to the payment system Perfect Money. If they undertook an obligation to distribute all money among our investors, let them do that.

Perfect Money may assure you that the accounts of SportArbs were always empty. But just think a bit: Firstly, Perfect Money control all accounts and may give you ANY logs, amounts, batches, etc. Secondly, what is the reason for Perfect Money to start this conflict? What for they locked our server and wrote that we are a dishonest company? What for they launched a mass mail demonizing our company? Nothing is done for no special reason. They wanted to get our stabilization fund and if we don't push on them together they will appropriate the money of your and our stabilization fund.

If our web-site works unstable sometimes, that means that Dragonara and Perfect Money are scared by the truth and initiated a DDOS-attack against our web-site, so that less people knew the truth of the current unpleasant situation. That's why we ask all of you personally, even if you made a deposit via GDP, to publish this article at forums, blogs and other public places. Please, don't forget that the interests of our company are violated. And the interests of our company are 100% your interests too.

Recommendations:

1) To investors who made deposits via Perfect Money:
You should contact Perfect Money and to learn how can you withdraw your initial deposit.

2) All people with positive balance at Perfect Money:
You should withdraw your money from Perfect Money and to terminate your work with this payment system once for all.

3) To web-site owners:
Dragonara is an unreliable service vendor. You shouldn't use their services if you don't want to find your website suddenly locked with a bullshit at your domain placed instead.

4) To e-currency exchangers:
We recommend to terminate your cooperation with this 'payment system' Perfect Money, as there's a big risk that some time your reserve funds will be suddenly distributed among your clients on an unknown basis and for unknown reasons.

So, who is telling the truth? Well, at least PM attack was good to see that SportArbs admin is still alive.
However I got tired by the countless excuses SA has been using to delay more and more.
Also, why were the deposits allowed, but not the withdrawals? If e-currencies are so unreliable then SA shouldn't allow more deposits to them.

There is an interesting discussion on forums about this.
Me? My opinion is that the truth is somewhere in middle, both with SportArbs and PM guilty. Oh, and I still have my doubts about SportArbs being a "genuine" thing....

Post your opinions on the commentaries field.

No updates next couple days

2010-07-14T14:32:00.000-07:00

As the tittle says :)
I am going to Spain to visit my sister, and I won't take my laptop, as it would be worthless anyway because I don't have any mobile net connection...only if I use my phone, but the speed would be painfully slow and roaming costs insane lol.

For fresh news keep an eye in the blogs listed on right side.
And avoid to send me emails during this time, I don't want to have my mail inbox full when I am back :)

So, see you again in Saturday/Sunday.

StrictPay update

2010-07-14T03:19:00.000-07:00

Hello again, I just read this update in yourplatinumfunds.com , and being an important update, I decided to publish it here.

My opinion about current SP: I don't know, but seems to be a dead duck at the moment. They are asking people to trust them again, starting with accounts from 0....a big thing, considering their current situation.
I wish SP recover, but things are not looking good at all for them.

Here is the update:

StrictPay Customers

We have spent numerous months trying to battle this situation with the banks and authorities that are holding the majority of our funds, as well as trying to keep StrictPay in business by making the changes outlined in the email update sent on 5-29-10. The problem now is that we are not making any progress on the situation with those two entities, and we have received more news from our legal team. They feel that with the latest developments with the frozen funds, that we are very likely looking at this issue not being resolved for at least 12 months as a best case scenario, and possibly up to 24 months as a worst case scenario. We still cannot speak of any specifics, other than to say (as we stated earlier) that two of the major merchants that accepted StrictPay as a payment option were being heavily investigated by the authorities, and we were pulled into that investigation as well due to them accepting us as a payment option, and even more so because all three of us had accounts with the same bank. Due to the frequency and volume of their requests, one of them found out which bank we were using and specifically got an account at that same bank in order to get funds transfers more quickly, as well as to save them some bank fees. Only a select few customers knew the location of our main bank containing the majority of our funds, and that will never happen again. This is also why we have always sent and received funds from banks other than the ones that hold the majority of our funds. We know it is frustrating for everyone, but we need to do what is right for our company, and that means that we cannot give any other detail on this legal matter. We want to stress again that there is not an issue with StrictPay being involved with these two merchants, but it is almost as simple as us having the majority of our funds in the wrong bank at the wrong time.

It is important to note that we had a similar situation happen to us quite some time ago with Stanford Bank, and we recovered from that without any issues that involved our customers or the time we took to process transactions for you all. As a matter of fact, we still have not had a single penny returned to us from that situation, but we kept being able to serve our customers none the less. It is also important to note that our owners have recently added just over $100,000 of their own funds to help us try to continue to process as many of the withdraw requests as we could these last few weeks. They did this even though we have not had much support since the original update was sent on 5-29-10, and the situation looked like it was going to get worse. We understand that we are very behind on many withdraw requests, but we have used this entire 100k with virtually nobody reporting to the various outlets that we have indeed paid them. 70k of this money was used for processing bank wire withdraw requests, including some to exchanger services in hopes that they would continue to work with us, 20k was used to process debit card withdraw requests, and 10k was used to process check by mail withdraw requests. We have not gotten very many deposits, and we have even held off on processing ACH deposit requests until now when we received a better update concerning the situation. We would hope this shows that we are not just trying to get new funds so we can run, as seems to be one of the widely reported rumors circulating. That being said, we will need new funds to support us in the future, as we will outline below, but this is not in order to accumulate funds for ourselves, but rather to help all of our customers recover their own funds more quickly.

With this latest news of the possible best and worst case time frames it is likely to take to resolve this issue, we are only left with two choices to keep StrictPay in business. Those two choices are:

1. We put StrictPay on hold until this issue with the frozen funds gets resolved. This is going to take somewhere between 12 and 24 months to resolve, and during that time our customers would not be able to get any of their funds out of their accounts. This would mean that there is essentially no more StrictPay activity until this situation is resolved, and we feel that this option does not help anyone in the short term.

2. We keep StrictPay in business and activity continues, including the customer support, transaction processing times, etc. that you all have commended us on in the past before this current situation caused us to fall behind. We do this by creating one sub account for every current StrictPay account, and start each sub account with a zero balance. We allow all current accounts to work as they are now, and all people that make deposits, or receive funds transfers, from this new sub account to another new sub account, will have their funds go only into their new sub account. Each customer's older accounts with their current balances can still be used to send and receive funds if they wish, but the balances on those old accounts cannot be used to withdraw funds. We think this is very important as it allows customers and merchants to use these accounts freely again, and you will eventually get these funds moved to the sub account that can be withdrawn out as we will explain below. We have been told that many merchants are not taking StrictPay because they feel they are stuck with "dead funds", but with the system we will explain below this will not be the case. The new system is a great way to build and work with your current account, and over time those funds will get moved to your new sub account that can have funds withdrawn from it.

To continue with number two above, here is how the new system will be implemented. Any withdraw request from a current account will be refunded back into that account. New customer sub accounts will be the same StrictPay account number but with a "-1" after them, so customers and merchants alike will know exactly what customer account sent the funds (either a sub account which can have withdraws, or the older StrictPay accounts that cannot have withdraws). Sub accounts with the "-1" will only be able to send and receive funds to/from other sub accounts, and older accounts will only be able to send and receive funds to/from other older accounts without the "-1". With this new system in place, if customers begin to use our services again as they have done for well over 2 years, we will then start to take no less than 0.75% of the 2% Send Funds fee every few weeks and credit that amount to the sub accounts of every customer. This same credited amount will also be taken out of the older account, and thus customers will be able to again begin to gradually see their funds move from the older accounts that do not allow withdraws, to the newer sub accounts that will allow withdraw requests.

We obviously feel that number two is the better of the two choices. Now it is very important to realize that this will only work if people use our services like they did before. We would hope that will be an easy choice for people to do, as this will help everyone eventually receive all their funds, as well as the fact that our superior customer service was what made us as big as we are now. StrictPay in fact started many of the trends you see in the payment processor industry today, such as the live chat support option, and shorter stated customer service reply time frames that were actually met. We have always been proud of the fact that we were heralded as having the best customer service in the industry, and this will continue after these new changes are implemented. We are sure that some will say they would not use us again, even with the implementation of these new changes, and to those people we would ask "Why?" Before this happened, StrictPay was a top option for many customers and merchants, and if we truly wanted to just fold up shop and disappear without trying to help our customers, we would have done so before dumping over 100k of our own money into trying to keep this afloat. We also will continue to use what is universally considered the best DDOS protection company, one that is not even connected to this industry, and we would not continue to pay for this service if we wanted to just close up shop.

Implementing these changes also allows us to offer better withdraw limits for our customers. We will still leave the "real time" withdraw request time frames in place so you can see how long requests are currently taking to process, but keep in mind that it will take the first few days of withdraw requests being entered into the system to really become accurate. Here are the new withdraw request maximum limits:

Wire withdraws: $100 minimum and $7,500 maximum
Debit card withdraws: $10 minimum and $1,000 maximum
Check by mail withdraws (available to U.S. customers only): $10 minimum and $2,000 maximum

Please keep in mind that we still have the following options available for depositing funds, and all options will be "no fee" options until further notice: ACH (for U.S. customers only), bank wire, and personal check, money order, or cashier check by mail.

StrictPay continuing to do business should also be welcome news to one of the bigger merchants (and their customers) that were using our services until they had to put things on hold for sometime. There is word that they are about to begin processing refunds to their customers, and once they make a deposit into their new sub account, they will then be able to start refunding StrictPay customers as well. This in turn will provide us with fees from the transfers that we will use to help to move funds from the old StrictPay accounts to the newer sub accounts that you can withdraw from.

The bottom line is this: If people use our services by depositing funds into their new sub accounts (which can also be withdrawn from at any time), and use us as one of their main payment processor options again as they always have, then we will recover from this. Eventually then ALL customers will get their full balances moved to their new sub account over time, and things will be back to normal more quickly than if everyone had to wait up to 24 months in hopes that we recover all of our funds. Lawyer fees will not allow us to get the entire amount back, but we do not foresee anything else cutting into that recovery amount. We all have a lot to lose if people choose not to continue to use StrictPay as a payment option, but we can all only gain if everyone uses StrictPay as they always have in the past.

We would like to leave you with this one last question: What do you have to lose by using StrictPay again, knowing that we have always been there in the past for our customers without issue? If you still have a need for an online payment processor, then why not choose to use StrictPay as you always have.

As always, we appreciate you choosing StrictPay as a payment option, and we shall see over the next few months if everyone will actually help us get back to a sense of normalcy using this new system.

Thank you
Team StrictPay
www.strictpay.com

Wbwso review - part2

2010-07-14T02:25:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, today I have a surprise (it was also for me).
The reader that asked me yesterday my opinion about Wbwso confronted the admin with the doubts I shown in my mini-review.

So, when I woke up today, I had an email with admin answers:

1.
Q: ""Imagine he had a pool of 100.000$ and everyone was compounding...this would create 90 millions $ (100--->90.000 then 100.000 ---> 90.000.000). I really find hard to create such amount of wealth with internet domains, as I think it doesn't offer enough liquidity to allow this in 3 years."

A: Well WBwso does have limits, we are looking for around 5000 active members and the average investment is not a very large amount. Add to this that that most of the purchases are made in short term packages that does not use compounding. To give you an idea, WBwso will administrate websites for a value of around 200 million in 3-4 years time. Split this over thousands of sites and the average value per site is not that high actually. If we needed to sell all the sites over one night, it would reduce the value significantly too, but this is not the case.

My opinion: well, good to know there are limits, however, these should be made clear from beginning. This way it is like the Arbitrage hyips that tell "yes there is a limit, we will tell you later".
And I believe most of purchases are in short term packages and that the average deposit isn't large. The description I mentioned was just an hypothetical situation, that is currently possible because I just checked these 100 to 90.000$ packages and they have a maximum of 10.000$ deposit, which would bring 9millions (that still concerns me in terms of liquidity), in case an adventurous investor decide to try his luck (probably we will never know because I think no-one is nuts enough to wait 3 years in hyip world lol).

2.
Q. "Also, some plans seems to have a bit of "hyip style", like the current "DomainPack 2 - Developing domains" plan, that offers different % according to your deposit size. And again fixed, If it was variable like "up to...", where the admin could give more to big deposits (taking less admin fee) on good days, and lower on bad days. With fixed it smells too much hyip style."

A: It is a "flexi rate", meaning it is paid directly related to the actual result. Can go up and can go down.

Paying 7 USD for a domain worth 70-7000 is not that difficult, and if you just like us are willing to develop it, it makes it much easier to actually get a sale price closer to the valuation in a short time then if just left alone.

This is what we do for business.

My opinion: When I read "Estimated return % weekly: 3.2 - 3.8" it looked like the variation was due to deposit size. However the admin is right, and in all plans it says "flexible return", so I take my mistake.
However I would like to know if the rates are truly variable or not, mainly on the 0.62% plan. So I ask the opinion of my readers about this (or I will have to try it myself).

3.
Q: "For all these reasons I decided to pass way Wbwso. I always have in mind the risk vs reward value on every online program, and for wbwso this ratio is a bit high (risky) if we treat as a pure hyip. And unfortunately we never know if it is real or not, only if Alexa shows a massive drop (=lack of new funds) and the program continues like if it was nothing."

A: I guess we are a bit different, HYIP's normally try to advertise them self to get new members, WBwso has not even added a new banner since 2008, we have had NO advertising, no paid forum posters, no marketing for new members, nothing at all to get new members since early 2009! Why? Currently we are very happy with the member base we have and we always prefer to take care of "current business" rather than get "new business". I suppose our Alexa ranking will drop when we stop accepting new members, and we could do that any day and be comfortable with our current grows, it is better then planned and stable.

My opinion: now I disagree a bit here. Probably the admin misunderstood my words.
It is fact and known there were hyips that didn't advertise too much, or not at all, but their popularity still grew over time because blogs and monitors added it for free because they were different and looked good.
So, as Alexa trend shows, Wbwso is enjoying the same effect, because its popularity was (almost) always increasing, and it's not a surprise, because over time I saw it listed and reviewed in more and more blogs, and even in monitors. And this doesn't mean the admin paid them, just like I did a review about it without contacting the admin.
What I meant is: until there is a huge (really huge because of Wbwso plans) situation with lack of growth (=lack of fresh funds), I will prefer to treat Wbwso as a good and well managed ponzi.

Once again, these are just my opinions, it doesn't mean I am correct or not. But I always prefer a cautious and skeptical approach.
However I really enjoyed the answers from admin, and it is a good sign, because these days it's very rare to find such passionate admin that tries his best to defend his site.

Just like I said: Wbwso is in a gray area (between pure hyip and real business), and whatever your opinion is, just remember that real businesses also goes down, so...it's better to treat it as a game.

Wbwso "review"

2010-07-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Check the part 2 here.

New update here.

Hello again folks.
It seems I have misled you, because, instead of Lions Society review, I will present you a "mini-review" of Wbwso.
The reason behind this decision it's an email from one of my long time readers asking me some thoughts about Wbwso, and I practically did a small review for him.
And you know...I am the kind of lazy guy, and it isn't the first time this happens...re-using an email to publish here :)

Here is the review, pretty much the email I sent, but with some Alexa graphs to help you understanding my idea of "opportunity window".

Basically wbwso is one of those programs that fall in a gray area, because it seems to be more than just a standard hyip, however I also took a look at Alexa graph and noticed it (almost) always a positive growth, meaning that so far it could be just a long-term hyip sustaining itself very well over time.

Another thing that popped in my mind is scalability. The wbwso business model could be done, however it would surely have some limitations in terms of amount of cash the admin could take and generate profit.
Imagine he had a pool of 100.000$ and everyone was compounding...this would create 90 millions $ (100--->90.000 then 100.000 ---> 90.000.000). I really find hard to create such amount of wealth with internet domains, as I think it doesn't offer enough liquidity to allow this in 3 years.
And domains market possibly has also its ups and downs, so offering fixed profits doesn't seem to be the best way for this business model.

note: I am not an expert about domains market, so I don't have an accurate idea of its liquidity. The above description is just an assumption with my low knowledge about the topic.

Also, some plans seems to have a bit of "hyip style", like the current "DomainPack 2 - Developing domains" plan, that offers different % according to your deposit size. And again fixed, If it was variable like "up to...", where the admin could give more to big deposits (taking less admin fee) on good days, and lower on bad days. With fixed it smells too much hyip style.

For all these reasons I decided to pass way Wbwso. I always have in mind the risk vs reward value on every online program, and for wbwso this ratio is a bit high (risky) if we treat as a pure hyip. And unfortunately we never know if it is real or not, only if Alexa shows a massive drop (=lack of new funds) and the program continues like if it was nothing.

At this moment, treating it as a pure hyip, it should have another 6 months in front of it (given the current growth on alexa), depending on how bad Christmas it hit (probably not considering its long plans). And we need 23 weeks (~5.3months) to be risk free with the 0.62% daily plan (=4.34% weekly).

Here is the Alexa graph to help you understanding my idea:

The red line shows the overall growth trend, and it is like the "pessimist view", and the one I use to determine the risk, and as you can see it should only hit 10.000 mark in early 2011, ~6months from now like I said above.
The green line shows the possible forecast with the current (2010) growth, and this is like a "optimistic view", which is useful to help us to have an idea of possible reward. As you can see, with the current growth (which should be enough to sustain it, considering the long-term plans, and their low profit), Wbwso could survive almost another year, even if it is nothing but a ponzi.

So, surprisingly, there is still a good window to risk :)

After doing this mini-review, and mainly the actual risk vs reward analysis, I almost changed my mind about Wbwso, because it seems to still be a decent opportunity there.

However, as I always say: play safe. And don't forget Alexa trends are just "that"...a trend that sometimes help us (not an Octopus lol), and we never know if there could be a huge drop in growth at any time, or an harder Christmas for Wbwso than we expect.

Hope you enjoy the "recycled" review :)

note 2: all links shown don't have any ref link, because I still don't have a deposit here...so wouldn't be fair to build a downline here without being inside the ship.

Some news

2010-07-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

Hello all, I just want to bring some recent news for new. Later today I should publish my review of Lions Society.

Cash-Miner: currently I am facing difficulties to access it, but the problem seems to be isolated because I used a (private) proxy and was able to access it, but was very slow.
Maybe some host problems or DDoS attack going on.

BestEthanol- yesterday it was also inaccessible during afternoon. I checked it's availability and the domain was unavailable across the globe, leading me to think the worst....
However I quickly noticed Lions Society was also offline, so I concluded it was probably a problem in HushHosting side.

But it is all solved now, and both BestEthanol and Lions Society are online now.

Cash-Miner review

2010-07-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

update: this program is no longer paying.

Hello folks, after almost 1 month without review (the last was Fenix-Trust), here I am again to bring new reviews.
Like I told in last update, I have for now, 3 review to be done: AMF, Lions Society and Cash-Miner.

I decided to start with Cash-Miner, because, honestly, it is the easier to do.

So, let's start with it...

Cash-Miner was launched in June 17th, meaning it has almost one month, so it is still relatively new for those who like only to join fresh hyips.

Plans:
8% weekly - from 1$ to 500$
9% weekly - from 500$ to 5.000$
10% weekly - from 5.000$ to 50.000$

All plans don't expire, and you can withdraw your principal at any-time, but with a variable fee, that will reduce proportionally to your earnings.
For example, in the 8% weekly plan, the fee will reduce 8% each week, starting from 100% (so, after the first payment the fee will be 92%).

This means, for the 8% plan, that after 13weeks, the fee will be 0%, and if you withdraw the principal, the total ROI will be 204%.
I don't like too much this option to withdraw at any time, because it can causes large withdrawals if anything happens to Cash-Miner, like for example suffer a DDoS attack and be down for a week...obviously some people will get scared and pull of the funds.

However, it also has a positive side, because to be "risk-free", you will only need 7 weeks (56% from profits + principal with penalty fee of 44%), and this might attract people.
It's like a double hedged knife.
Compounding is also available, but I don't know how this affect the penalty fee, if it decreases constantly by 8% (for example) or if it decreases faster due to compound effect.
The score for plans is 0.

Suppport and feedback: can't give a score because I don't have experience with it. They also give an address and a phone number. This doesn't make it more real, but shows more effort to look good in investors eyes, however I haven't tried any of them.

Design and content: √ +1 , the design is attractive, because it is quite simple but still good looking.
The content seems to be original on main page (although there isn't many info there lol), as a quick search on google didn't reveal any similar content in other sites.

Script and security: √√ +2 , the script appears to be a custom one, at least I don't find many similarities with commercial scripts. to confirm I also googled for other reviews, and all them said the script is custom.
SSL is present, provided by Comodo (and it isn't the free trial), and the site is hosted on a dedicated server provided by Staminus and DDoS protection by DDoswiz.
Summary: good script and average host/ddos protection.

Payment Processors: √ +1 , it offers a good selection, with AP, PM, LR, c-gold and Bank Wires. It only lacks STP to be complete (GDP is pretty much the same thing as LR and PM).

Sustainability and longevity/growth
On the sustainability side, you already know the option to get out at any time is a double-edged sword.
The rest, 8-10% was already tested (Saza and Xaga comes to my mind) and allowed to last quite decently.

On longevity side, the admin already played the "MNO review" card with the launch, meaning that in future, they are only left with "MNO interview" to increase growth, but it seems those interviews usually don't have much impact.
This also causes me some concerns about the launch, so let's take a brief look at alexa, to give us a rough idea of how has the growth been lately:

As you can see, it had a moderated launch (~40.000 on rank graph), and then it seems it is not growing. In fact it seems it is decreasing a bit.
On max timeframe:

Here things look a bit better, and it appears to be growing, despite the initial decrease after the launch.

Like I said for Fenix-Trust, during the current market it is hard to make accurate conclusions using Alexa patterns because most investors just look without joining, so it's hard to correlate the traffic patterns with real members.

So, it's 0 for sustainability, and 0 for longevity (it's simply impossible to "predict" with current market, only in late August we can have a better picture).

To end the review, the final score for Cash-Miner will be 3.5/5, the same I gave Fenix-Trust because although Fenix seems to be more professional, Cash-Miner has a edge with e-currencies. The rest (plans, script, security) seems to be the same thing.

However, due to "apparent" lack of growth, I will label Cash-Miner with "medium" risk in my monitor list, because I think it is a more riskier option than Fenix-Trust, because the later is growing in popularity.

For both, time will tell what will happen, because the most difficult phase for them is now (and then Christmas if they reach the end of the year).
Remember, play safe and treat it like a game, don't forget about my TWIMTBP article ;)

dvd hyip blog back to business...tomorrow

2010-07-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, I am very tight with time right now, so I decided to delay the news for tomorrow.
Also, I should be back in full force tomorrow, because I have my last exam (of this first storm of exams) in 24hours. I still have one left for the 2nd round, but it should be a piece of cake compared to those I have done lately.

...unless tomorrow's exam goes terribly bad! I hope not, because this is the hardest exam of this year, and I wouldn't like to see it again in the 2nd round of exams lol.

See you tomorrow.

News

2010-07-06T03:44:00.000-07:00

LionsSociety- Last week it gave us 2.46%, quite good if you ask me. And the rate should keep increasing quickly, unless a program of movers and shakers list falls, just like happened with High Yield Club.
2.46% translates into 12.3% full weekly profits, and 9.48% is reinvested, meaning next week we should expect an increase of ~10% on earnings ((principal amount+9.48%)x12.3%).

This strategy of heavy compounding works, as I usually do the same, except last times because of lack of new and good programs (actually there are already some), and due to being busy with my exams.

I know most people don't particularly like to see their profits cut in 1/5, but this will help you to face big collapses like we saw in this first half of 2010.

CherryShares- Well, I am not investing in this hyip, but just wanted to mention it surprised me a lot, because I was expecting to see it falling after the introduction of daily plan. Given its lack of growth at that time, it was like a final attempt to steal as much money it could before ran away.
But...this new plan actually worked to increase Cherry's popularity and the program already survived 2 months since the introduction of the daily plan.
And we even had this MNO vs hyip.com problem that could affect negatively the image of CherryShares.

Recently they opened a forum, probably to maintain their popularity momentum:

CherryShares has something new for you, as we always think and hope
for your comfort and wellbeing!

One very old member of us proposed some weeks ago to open a forum for
us and we agreed! You have a place to interact, to request advice and
to get helped! Quickly now, open up a new tab and write there -
http://speakdollars.com! We hope you will enjoy your time there. Don`t
forget that we always love to interact with our customers - first the
live chat, now the forum place! Let`s keep this company at the
deserved level - THE TOP!

PMAForex- the things are a bit shaky with Gold. If you read my shout box, I had a nice discussion with Ritish about Gold and other valuable metals.

I read some articles and news, and it seems Gold hit a peak of value, that's why the sudden drop of value.
Others news were more positive, due to big drops in almost every other metal, meaning it wasn't an isolated situation with gold.

One thing is for sure, the current market is moving a lot, that can affect adversely the strategy used by PMAForex.
Those who haven't joined it I advise to wait until things get stable again.
And those who are already in the boat, I advise to read some news about gold and check charts, to understand better the profits/losses that PMA brings. It is always good to know a bit more about this business :)

Weekend news

2010-07-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, once again I am sorry for the low amount of posts lately, but my exams are really taking a lot of my time.
For example, now it's 6am here, all night studying hard for next exam, Monday.
But I still have a few time before going sleep to update here.

First, the most important news are about PMAForex, that took a huge hit on Thursday.
Well, it's part of the Forex risk, and this major drop of gold was really fast:

As you can see, red line represents Thursday movements, and it was a real fast fall.
But it's part of the business, and currently PMA was able to recover a good amount of this loss.
And there are no open trades, thanks to Xolotl, who noticed that the Balance was equal to Equity.
I know this was hefty loss for those who joined this week, but as I told before, it was still a bit too early to determine if this PAMM account was truly stable and consistent or not.

Just as a side note, the admin told me, a week ago, that he didn't like at all the current Gold movement, as it is moving too fast.
Let's hope they recover this loss and start bringing profit again.

Fenix-Trust- Introduced recently the Bank Wire options. Usually this was considered a good flag, because not all programs offer this option, so it is often a sign of quality.

Fenix Trust Limited has actively developing and now we have new payment opportunity - wire bank transfers.
Receiving bank transfers processing in the automatic mode, the minimum amount for bank transfers is $300.
To send us wire please go to the investor area, in the section "Load account" you will see new option SWIFT, click it and then get bank details.

Of course its success boils down to market acceptance. So let's take a look at current Alexa trend to see how is growth going.

So, we can take 2 approaches:
-considering the "support points" (lowest levels) it clearly shows a decent growth;
-considering a naked eye approach looking at the "average trend", the growth is much lower, but it still has some.

Which approach is more correct? Well, at this point I think it's more important if Fenix survives this low season or not, and considering it's moderated (nothing of huge) profits I would say it has a decent chance.
Of course we never know, especially with current market conditions, but things seems to still look good for Fenix Trust.

Cash-Miner- it integrated the ticket system into members' back office. How good is doing this hyip? Well I don't know, because lately Alexa trends were a bit tricky because all market is looking for a new great leader for this industry, and it's hard to determine how much traffic during program launch correspond to people joining it.
Like Fenix-Trust, if it manages to survive the low season, then it might have a decent chance.
At least they offer a decent PPs offer, so those seeking for a bit more security can use AP. The addition of STP would also be welcome.

We have added a "Support tickets" section to your Cash-Miner member menu. It enables you to track tickets history and thus helps you to keep an overview of your Cash-Miner related issues. Please use it instead of the contact form as it greatly helps us to organize all the support requests we get.

GNI news

2010-06-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

GNI- another update. Sometimes I wonder why do they so long to make the refunds.
I mean, they received refund applications since March, and they are still saying the review of these refunds take a long time....didn't they had time during March->May?
They could very well review the applications as soon they received, and at the moment just process them.

Another fact...the script (as far I remember) was very straightforward telling if you were in profit or not, even if you funded your account with different PPs, Even NeverSay script does this ;)
And the example they said, about users funding multiples accounts with the same PP account. Ok, the script can't do this automatically, but they just need to sum up all accounts profit/loss and calculate the refund amount (if the total is a loss).

So, this isn't "that" time consuming like they say. Of course for a big amount of accounts this will take its share of time, and GNI had a lot of members. But...if memory serves my correctly, GNI itself said most members were in profit, so it should be a fraction of the overall members number.

Don't interpret me wrong, I am more than happy to see the refunds going on, and one of my readers already confirmed his refund, so it's definitely happening.
But why it is taking so long? It smells fishy for me and I will keep my opinion that probably they used this time to open side programs to collect money to pay these refunds.

But...this theory also doesn't make full sense, after all if they are opening side programs to scam people, why not scam the current GNI members instead of have all this work?
Unless...they are doing this to gain trust among hyip investors to later make a huge scam with GNI2...

And even if they really did Arbitrage (highly unlikely given the GNI2 was promising 30% monthly, more than "recovery" plan of GNI...does it make sense at all?) you can count me out of it. What they did in January/February, known as telling "everything is fine, the recovery plan is more than enough" and incentive all members to invest, to just tell everything is over in March...and only members at lost will be refunded...well, I bet that member that were in profit and, falling in these promises, deposited the profit, probably got pissed of.

I know that probably some of my readers (mainly those that received already the refund) won't like my words, but I just want to warn you to not fall in love with GNI just because you got your refund, keep your skepticism in a high level and demand your rights to have the full identification of the admin (after all they required your ids to make exchange of funds), some kind of proof they are doing Arbitrage and mainly, a signed contract that could be used in court...just in case ;)
As far I remember they had a lots of new rules and stuff in GNI2 (ArbsUnlimited) TOS, so anyone joining it should also demand for his/her rights before placing any money on it.

Oh, and about the StrictPay situation, I wonder why they need 30days to think about it! It's simple, just drop it, I bet none of members want it, and probably GNI team didn't uploaded a lot of funds to it (given the speed of the refunds).
Will it slow down the process? Unless most of members deposited with SP, and, from what I remember, STP was more popular in GNI.
But even if it slows down...I bet it wouldn't slow as much as 30days.

Here is the update:

Greetings to Refund Applicants

In this update, we will be discussing the following:

1. The status of the refunds

2. How StrictPay's current crisis will impact the payment of refunds.

1. The Status of the Refunds:

I felt its appropriate to bring the community current with our progress refunding clients who were not in profit.

We began coordinating the effort in the middle of March with the intent to begin payouts on May 17th, hoping to have all refund applications completed by the end of June, the first part of July at the latest. The refund process is/was far more involved than any of us could have imagined. When starting Goldnuggetinvest.com, never did I or any of our administrative team fathom having to make the number of client refunds we in fact, are.

To be able to complete this process, it's imperative we do not issue payments to persons not otherwise entitled to such. This includes members in profit, hackers, fraudsters and so forth (we do not put our in-profit members in the same category as the others, please do not interpret this as such). To ensure inappropriate payouts are NOT made, there is a very intensive verification process that MUST be made with each refund, regardless of the amount.

Further complicating this matter (no fault of anyone) are those customers who used one PP account to fund multiple GNI accounts. Verifying refunds becomes ever more tedious and time-consuming. Further, many of you have not only utilized a PP account which funded multiple GNI accounts, you have multiple PPs, and these PPs have been used to fund different accounts, sometimes as many as 15 or more.

When a customer has three different sources of deposits, one or two of these PP accounts has paid out (cumulatively) in profit; but the other one or two PP, funding accounts have not (paid out in profit), but the request to be paid is to that PP which is in profit (and has funded several different GNI accounts), verifying all payees coincide with the various data base(s) we use to complete this process, becomes very, very time consuming. The scenario I have just described is appearing to be more often the rule, NOT the exception.

It's been brought to my attention many of you are becoming increasingly impatient with the refund process. Our formerly trusted members are sending requests to have us circumvent the process for their benefit at the expense of the community and those who are waiting patiently. When seeking to verify the "emergency," we are finding the facts have been fabricated. This is unacceptable.

However, we also find it unconscionable if our refund process is instrumental in the preservation of life and / limb of a customer or immediate family member of a customer. Unfortunately, privacy laws world-wide prohibit GNI staff from the review of medical information to verify or substantiate claims made by our customers. We are truly sorry as this is something we feel compelled to address. Unfortunately, our hands are tied.

Further complicating this matter is the issues facing one of our most visible Business Partners, StrictPay.

2. How StrictPay's current crisis will impact the payment of refunds.

As most of you know (certainly those who deposited or withdrew using SP), StrictPay is facing some very trying times. The cause of their problems is nothing we can or should comment thereto, other than to say it is troubling for everyone.

At the time of this writing, the turnaround times to withdraw from StrctPay is as follows:

1. Bank wire - Maximum amount allowed / 500.00. Average time to Process (not necessarily the time client receives the funds), 29 days
2. Check by Mail - Maximum amount allowed / 300.00. Average time to Process, 29 days.
3. Loading of Debit Card - Maximum Load Amount / 200.00. Average Processing Time, 28 days

As a result, we have suspended StrictPay (SP) refunds. SP has sent all of its current account holders an overview of the current state of affairs; with an assurance they will and are taking all reasonable steps to mitigate further problems. They have every intention to resume operations at their previous (albeit, some times, slow) level.

We have no reason to think otherwise, nevertheless we do not want our valued customers stuck with PP funds which cannot be redeemed for hard currency. Those of you who feel compelled to complain about the temporary suspension of StrictPay refunds, would you want us expediting your payout only to find that you can't do anything with the funds you hold?

Understandably, most of you would like to abandon StrictPay, preferring instead to use another PP or E-Currency. While this may be an option we are forced to swallow, it is less than ideal. It will require multiple layers of client re-identification but for the currency swap, we would not otherwise need. It can ONLY slow the process, perhaps substantially, we just don't know yet.

Many of you have forwarded, documentation in your effort to expedite the process. It does not. Please refrain from requesting to switch your refund PP until we have made a final decision in this regard. Those of you who have sent verification documents to Debbie, I have instructed her to, at this time, refrain from opening these emails....she doesn't have the time.

Those of you who have sent verification documents in your ticket, she is obligated to respond or your refund gets held up. This, likewise will slow down the show. We are hoping to know enough within the next 30 days to have enough information to make a decision whether or not to use SP in our refund process. Please keep the speculation to a minimum.

Summary

I assure all of you, we are doing our best to get these refunds back to you in a timely fashion. In a little over a month we have issued approximately $300,000.00 in refunds. We expect to maintain this level throughout the process.

Thank you,

Robert & Team

FXopen notes

2010-06-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

Hello folks,
I was answering some readers' emails about PMAForex this morning and I noticed I forgot to tell important things about FXopen.
I will also update my mini-review with these notes, so you can always find it easily.

Important notes about FXopen:
-if you use LR to fund your account, make sure you change you LR name to the same name you used in FXopen's account. I advise to create a separate LR account for this, and only for this, to not spread personal information.
Usually this problem doesn't happen with AP accounts, because most people use verified AP accounts, meaning you already have your name on it, that should match FXopen's account.

-do NOT mix different e-currencies in the same account. FXopen policies about this are not the "best", and usually will generate confusion. I read somewhere in the forum you will be only allowed to withdraw the same amount you deposited to each e-currency.
And I also read that if one of e-currencies used is more than 50% of total capital, then you can withdraw everything to that e-currency.
Also read that if you use various e-currencies, you will be only allowed to withdraw to your last e-currency used.

....Basically this is a big mess.
I think the last rules are:

if deposit was made using several payment methods then withdrawal to each
system is possible in the amount of deposit and
profit can be
withdrawn by payment method that was used for biggest deposit to
trading account.

My advice: if you want to use another e-currency then make sure to "clean" you account, withdrawing everything.

-I read on forum that FXopen is not liable to what happens to e-currencies. So if LR or PM goes lost their value, FXopen won't allow you to withdraw to others e-currencies.
Here is an example about e-gold:

when you opened your account and funded it with an e-currency you where agreeing to FXOpen's TOS which clearly states that withdrawals can only be paid via the original deposit method. Why? The reason is because FXOpen hold's funds in these e-currencies to cover the eventual withdrawals, so while you are waiting to access your 7k, imagine how much capital is locked up in FXOpen's main e-gold account(s)?

Should FXOpen be liable because e-gold was seized and subsequently shut down by the US government? The situation is a difficult one I admit that, but there is nothing that FXOpen can do until e-gold either comes back online or it is forced to liquidate it's assets.

FXopen themselves says that amounts bigger than 1000$ should be done with bank wires, because of these e-currencies risks.

Today's news

2010-06-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hello to all, this weekend was quite quiet in hyips field.
Just got a update from Cash-Miner telling the new flash banners were available:

This is our first quick newsletter just to let you know that there are now flash banners available in the "Referrals" section of your account. We hope they will help you to attract more potential members than the original gif banners.

They don't add much more than original gif banners, just a little more of eye candy.

I re-worked the info about PMAForex, because it seems some people are a bit lost with it....mainly because I thought everyone visited my monitoring page, because the info about it is all there.

So I added a banner in the "recent reviews" section on right side-bar, linked to my mini-review. And also added links to PMAForex page in all articles I mentioned it.
I hope this eases your navigation in my blog, when searching for info about PMAForex.

Oh, I also got the confirmation from the admin that the current profits are due to increased gold movement in last weeks, and not due to "over-trading".
But don't forget, Forex is as risky as hyips, so invest wisely :)

Weekly news

2010-06-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, how was your week? Good, I hope :)
Mine was really tiring, and I can't believe I am still at half of my exams' season, it seems to never end.

About hyip world, there aren't many news, this field has been a bit quiet. But better this way than hear about more programs falling...
Let's start with the few news we had this week:

BestEthanol- they decided to extend the deposits' bonus for 6 more days.
If you are a long-term reader of dvdhyip you already know I am not a big friend of these kind of bonus, but fortunately the bonus in this case are small, and not those insane bonuses to lure and attract new customers.
So, maybe there is nothing to worry about BestEthanol bonuses', those that were thinking to invest have this opportunity, and those that already had a considerable amount just stick to your original strategy and don't let your greed to deposit more than you should. Take always a safe position in these cases ;)

Here is the update:

Six months online!
Six months paying and numerous to go.
The Bestethanol Team and hopefully you as an investor celebrating
six months Bestethanol online.
Our Team voted to have the bonus increased for 6 more days.

The Bonus Levels are:
- Investments from USD 50 to USD 250 given a 4% deposit Bonus.
- Investments from USD 251 to USD 1000 given a 5% deposit Bonus.
- Investments from USD 1001 to USD 2500 given a 6% deposit Bonus.
and
- Investments from USD 2501 and more given a 8% deposit Bonus.

We like to salute and say thank you you to all our investors and
supporters, you rock!

AMF1989- it seems Ritish took another step to differ his program from the "regular" hyips and made upgraded his AP account status and now is able to offer "Financial services and products/Investments", meaning the funds deposited on his account will be locked 14days before allowing withdrawal of those funds.
Ritish said these 14 days won't affect AMF because like he said on our first emails
"the money floats 15days before it goes into our real business.
then every 30 days it pays depending on our fluctuating porfits.
if someone withdraws it takes 15 days float before the funds are released..."

Oh and here is a screenshot of the email Ritish sent me, I hope he doesn't mind (I believe it doesn't show any "personal" info):
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2166/amf.png

BaseBucks- Finally there are some news about it!
Basically it changed its name to My Traffic Value and re-opened a forum to keep older members updated about the "new BaseBucks".
There are some news on the forum, but I think it's better for those interested to check it instead of putting the updates here.

Honestly I just don't like the current launch date because it is still too far way...

And that's all news in hyips' field.

Outside hyips, I want to share that I am quite pleased with this week's performance of my PAMM account managed by PMAForex.
I started with 125$ and right now my balance is at 142.87$ and the equity at 137.88$.
So the profit was ~10.3%, considering only the closed trades (thus the actual equity), of course then we have the 30% performance fee, but in the end was a very good profit.
Of course it isn't all good news, and this amount of profit raises some concerns about their current strategy because it seems they are taking more risks (or it's the crash of Euro currency helping their trades). I just hope they don't get excited and start trading with amounts (% from the principal placed in each trade) bigger than they should.
I simply don't mind to have 5-7% each month, as long it is stable like their past records: http://www.myfxbook.com/members/pmaforex/goldscalper-system-1-daily/4556

So if you consider joining this PAMM account, then remember: forex, like hyips, carries a big risk, and the bigger profits = bigger risks taken.

Joke of the week?

2010-06-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, if you read my shout-box you already know I am a bit without time to make a "full" analysis of the this hilarious update from AirLine Finance (short term scam...yes scam because it didn't last one cycle) admin, that's worth a good laughs, at least for me lol:

Hello.

If your Alertpay interest payments are on hold I am sorry. When people file disputes on Alertpay , Alertpay reverses outgoing payments. They reversed our Alertpay payments for advert fees and some investors have reported their interest payments being reported.

You may think Alertpay is safe. After all you can file a claim if the program collapses. But what if you’re in profit? That’s right, alertpay isn’t safe because they reverse the funds to pay off people that are claiming. (legal term - clawbacks)

Don’t believe me? Then continue investing with alertpay. I dare you, and when you get into profit and the program collapses and your profits get reversed, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hit and runners:

On the first 1-3 days of Airline Finance there was mass interest and many investors. These were the hit and runner crowd, greedily joining new programs and running off at the first chance they get. After day3 things started to slow down.

An Admin can sustain a program long term if he can get past the hit and runner phase of the program - and it is expensive - im not prepared to pay for some greedy fucker hit and runners just so i can sustain, sorry.

But if you cant beat them - join them!!!

Guys if you want to win with HYIP invest in a program on the very first/second day (no later). Dont invest any more than $250. and invest in the shortest plan possible. at the first possible chance run away and then keep a look out for the next new hyip. good places to hit and run are on Paul’s blog MoneyNewsOnline and new paid stickys on the big forums.

NEVER RE-INVEST, ALWAYS USE THE SHORTEST POSSIBLE PLAN, DONT INVEST BIG AMOUNTS, DON’T USE ALERTPAY (unless you want your profits reversed when people start filing claims. No doubt Paul will make some sly comments here, take his advice then use Alertpay and let ur funds get reversed, im apparently only saying this because i cant get funds out of alertpay.).

Im at a small loss from Airline Finance and i can tell you the hyip market right now is unbelievably bad. Loads of advert spots free all over the place, talkgold dramatically lowering their advert prices, no long term programs around, etc, etc.

Im going to be investing into programs with my Hit and Runner strategy until things pick up again which will be at least 6 months away.

So...what is the first conclusion: we have a new candidate for the Roger place...the crappiest admin of the year.
Seriously, why blaming the members, AP, monitors, blogs,..., and not himself?

Unfortunately I am a bit of time to make a full "answer" for his claims, and doing it one week from now it's not worth because it wouldn't be anymore "fresh" news. But once again, fortunately for me, MNO also did an article about it, sparing me a good amount of time :)
Check it here: http://money-news-online.com/blog/2010/06/22/22062010-my-analysis-of-airlinefinance-email-and-other-news/

After reading it, here is a brief summary of my thoughts:
-I am a user of AP for almost 1year and 2 months, and although I only started using it more seriously (with bigger amounts) six months ago, I never faced a reversed payment from the hyips I exited in profit. And never heard it from anyone else.
So I am sorry dear AirLine Crap admin, but your update is completely wrong about this.

-I admit that AP sometimes make good programs collapse, but even in these cases you have a much better chance of being (partially) refunded than if you use LR or PM.

-this update is just hilarious, first, the admin blames the hit and runners, but then advises everyone to hit and run every program.
Yeah right, it is the best solution without doubt....but maybe if everyone start doing it the hyips just won't work, and we will have a bigger amount of programs closing in future before the first cycle, because admins will be aware of it and probably run with money.
Oh and don't forget, do it with just LR and PM....to make sure you can't try to reverse your deposit in case this happens....
He is really smart lol.

-Or maybe he wants to start that trend (HnR+LR/PM) so he can open future hyips, fill the pockets, run, and enjoy all money without the fear of facing blocked accounts.

Summary: he thinks he is very "smart" or something...
For me, it is just another "half-baked"/newbie admin because:
a)should know the current market conditions....
b)so he should have implemented measures to avoid HnRunners
c)or bring something new, just not the "same old story"....
d)start with a slow growth instead of promoting in almost every popular blog in first days.

At least Roger's Ville lasted more than one cycle, and had the heavy competition of TruEarn.
So I am proud to award this admin with the "worst admin of H1 2010", he truly deserves it, don't you think?

Actual state of hyips industry: what's happening?

2010-06-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

It's well know we are facing a really bad situation in hyips field. I was planning to do an article about it when I had more time (after my exams), but surprisingly, MNO published an article about it, and he told almost everything I was thinking about current situation.
Read it here (yeah... I don't want to steal clicks from MNO lol):
http://money-news-online.com/blog/2010/06/20/20062010-hyip-crisis-is-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-really-a-train/

Kuddos to MNO for bringing an educative article, it's a bit unusual.

Now, here is my view (a bit similar to MNO, but with some differences).

-comparing 2010 to 2009....pfff, not even comparable. Last year we had during this time clear leaders in this industry, that were already well established and still had plenty of room to grow. GNI, Genius, Nano, StableInterest, PirexFunds, PanaMoney, Infinitiva,....
Right now what we have? Almost none well established long-term hyip. There are a few new programs with above than average quality, but still need to establish themselves, and it won't be easy due to current market conditions.

-back in February, Jo (BaseBucks admin) already told me this would probably happen after the Genius fall. Honestly I never thought we would face the current situation, but I was wrong, because I assumed this domino effect would happen due to piggybacking on Genius or something. But I was wrong.

-I believe we had this "domino" effect because it was a whole generation of programs that died, those that launched before mid 2009: Genius, GNI, Nano (it only "started" in 2009 with the new plans), PanaMoney, Infinitiva, IncoForex....
These programs died mostly because it was their time to go...the growth margin was already thin. But there was another factor.

-Genius fall created an enormous fear in this industry, because many (and believe when I say many) believed it was real, and this opened the eyes of many people. I heard that people were even advertising it offline. As consequence most people were relying only on Genius, meaning many people relying on it probably left this arena.

-But...even "smart" investors that had their money distributed among several "leading" hyips also saw everything going down.
As I said above, that generation before mid 2009 was on its last steps, but Genius accelerated their collapse because, in almost all of these "leading" hyips, people stopped investing.
So what's happened? They started falling one after one: Genius->Infinitiva->PanaMoney->IncoForex->....none of them was able to survive.

-And to puts things even worse, the generation of the 2nd half of 2009 was not the best. TopFinancial, Atox,...growth too fast, meaning they compromised themselves for the long run. There was PTV Partner that lasted more than I expected, considering it's plans. Probably its cashflow was also affected by Genius collapse.

-The "leading" hyips from the first half of 2010 also helped this crisis....EuroNanoInvest had a super massive growth, no wonder it collapsed so fast. FXstar...not even worth to talk about, as it went down before Genius.
AlphaMoney had the opportunity to lead this generation, but compromised themselves with a huge launch.
This big launch was also caused by the market conditions, because everyone was looking to the next "Genius". AlphaMoney should be aware of it and not used MNO to start their online business, as it was a big factor for its massive launch.

-summary: all long-term programs that had potential, or were "leaders" went down in past 2 months, and this created a big hole on investors pockets....
Now there are much less people/money in this industry, and until things start getting better, this field is unpredictable.
Clearly Jo (BB admin) know what he said, now I am just wondering why he is taking so long to bring up BB to life again, as he now has a great opportunity to lead this new generation of hyips.

But the story doesn't end here...
Continuing, people lost their faith in long-term programs, and that's why we had a "booming" of high-ROI hyips in April, with ChokoMoney and mainly TrueEarn taking advantage of this situation.
But like I said at that time, this "high-ROI" fever would worn off quickly as soon the most know programs started falling.
After Choko's fall, most of high-ROI hyips following it only lasted one cycle. Why? Because everyone started hit n run these programs, or investing instead on TrueEarn, because it was leading the high-ROI field.

Now with TrueEarn out of business, the hit and run temptation increased even more. And like I also said before (that's why I don't promote hit n run strategies), many admins are deciding to close the shop even before the first cycle. And I understand why they are doing it, after all they only have fresh deposits on the first couple days, and then a few bucks on next days.
If I was an admin I would probably get pissed of about this, and the temptation to run with money would be big.

But, unlike Roger Scammer said, we can't blame the investors, after all it was the all above description that led to this situation, and the admins, being experienced players on this industry SHOULD create measures to avoid the hit n run temptation.
Yeah Roger, it is always better to blame the others right? But I blame you for bringing the "same old story", with nothing new, and in fact with less because you decided to not use STP and AP.

I saw on MNO a program implementing the old and unpopular rule of 50/50. Yes this may help, but will also scare potential investors, and I believe this isn't the best solution, but we never know how people accept it.

A good solution to avoid hit and runners and incentive re-investments is the strategy used by TheVaults. It had plans like 120-144% after 10-12days and managed to stay in this industry for a long time (and it is still here, although I believe it is risky right now because of their new plans).
How did they incentive the re-investments?
Simply, by forcing members to develop their account, starting from the bottom, 10$. Then, when you finish the first cycle, you are allowed to invest (if you want) on the next level, 20$, and when you finish the 20$ plan, you can go to next level, and so on.

This is an automatic incentive to re-investments, because most of people will want to earn more and reach higher levels, and in consequence will cashout less.

Of course there are more solutions, admins just need to be creative, and not bringing "the same old story" over and over again.

Today's news

2010-06-21T05:29:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, sorry for the weekend without news, but as usual I was busy with my studies for today's exam (another done :) ).

But there aren't news among the programs I have deposits....

I finally completed my membership on the private Arbitrage pool I told last week, placed a bit more than the minimum at this time, mainly to secure my position in the current "version" of the pool.
There will be a "2nd version" that will have some minor differences, and less returns, so I decided to move fast and join this version.

I also joined the PMAForex PAMM account, and my deposit should be activated tomorrow at 1.00 gmt, according to FXOpen.
I will then update here my experiences with this venture.

LionsSociety- this week it brought 1.85% profit, a bit less than last week.

AMF1989- there are big news for you :)
Not for me because I already saw the videos, but Ritish already disclosed the final video, you can see it here: http://www.megavideo.com/?v=GK6VJC7I
This video even has more stuff than those I saw a couple days ago.
And unlike the videos we saw from other hyips, here we have the admin showing himself, without fear to hide his face.
Honestly this add a lot of credibility for AMF, and right now my doubts about it are almost none.
However, just like I said about PMAForex, real businesses can eventually go down due to unpredictable things that can happen.

Right now the hyips field is a bit dangerous in my opinion, not only because of the low season like Lea said, but also because of "domino" effect we have been seeing since Genius fall.
MNO published a great article about this, and many of things he said are inline with my thoughts.
I will bring my own summary of that article today.

Saying this, I think I will hold a bit my investments on new hyips, not because there aren't good hyips out there, but because the market is a bit unpredictable right now.
I will instead try to build my investments on PMA, Arbitrage pool, LionsSociety and AMF. BestEthanol already has a good amount on it.

Today's news

2010-06-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

Hello once again,and sorry for these slow updates, but these days have been a madness for me, with up to 18h of study each day.

Let's start with bad news....it seems the current market conditions are still a big mess.

HighYieldClub- moved it to not paying status. It seems the admin decided to take a nice vacations with our money.
Totally unexpected, given it was starting to get popular.

ForexNetClub- another that seems to going to bite the dust soon. There are multiple complains on forums, and honestly it was expected due to lack of growth in last couple months.
My opinion: I think admin tried to recover the growth with advertising (including in my blog), but I think he should have instead improved his site, like adding KYC processors like STP and AP, lowering the minimum from the 50$ to something more affordable for current market conditions.
I told admin these two things, but it seems he chosen to not follow my advices. Maybe things could be different....and I believe these 2 things could have more impact than a advertising campaign, and would be cheaper too.

Good news

AMF1989-I already saw the videos made by the admin, and I am glad to say that the videos are not those with crap quality where you can barely see anything worth (like those from Xaga), and there is one with the admin showing up himself.
I can't show you the videos, so don't ask me, but I am sure once Ritish finishes the final video he will release.
This is a good sign of legitimacy of AMF business, and it's good to see the admin trying to show us what they do.

Of course real businesses can also face problems, so the best is always to treat it like a game.

Side news

Enabled the monitoring service again, but it is well separated from my personal investments to avoid confusion.
Probably it will barely be used, given the current crisis and also because I will continue to decline hyips with bad backtrack.

The first program added on it was Cash-Miner, one of those similar to Saza last year (never expiring plans), but this one has the possibility to have the principal back, something that could bite its longevity in future (but never-expiring plans also the same lol).

There is no doubt that current hyips market is in very bad health. I still think this low season was even worst than the normal because of the fall of biggest programs at same time: GNI, Nano, Infinitiva, PanaMoney, Genius and others all died closely to each other.
Mainly Genius, because it was hyped like if it was the best thing ever (and was indeed a very good hyip), and many people placed lots of money on it, most of them money they couldn't afford to lose, and were only relying on it.

Many people lost all of their online funds and left this industry, meaning there is less "online money" to spend on hyips, that limits the longevity of them.

Compare this low season to the same period of 2009...sure we also had big collapses last year like Stoic, Woip and others, but also had many good programs around that were stable to invest without worries (GNI, Genius,...). This time we don't have such hyips.

Also, another thing I have been noticing in last months is that people seemed to be "starving" for a good hyip (aka next Genius), and this led to bigger massive launches of programs that were considered better than average, like Alpha-Money.
Everyone was joining right on beginning and then there is almost no one joining a month after the launch.

And programs with short plans (like giving principal back after 30days) were suffering form hit and running strategies, because right now everyone is trying to make a quick buck and then jump to another program.

It seems things are calming down a bit, but all these behaviors from hyips' players are still there.
Let's see if things get better soon.

PMAForex mini-Review

So, I decided to not review a second hyip this week, and instead added a real investment in my list: PMAForex, the program I told that was offering PAMM accounts in FXOpen.
I didn't added it sooner because I am a bit reluctant about current FXOpen situation, as it lost its license (lol). But it seems they are trying to solve it.
I have been researching over and over again and my personal opinion is that FXOpen is not the best broker out there (just like other market-makers brokers), but it is also far from being the worse.

And honestly the conclusion I made is that there are complains in every broker, even on the biggest, meaning that most of complains are just because traders:
a) doesn't have nothing more to do than complaining;
b) do bad trades and then blame the broker.

Given the current hyip conditions, I think it was time to add it to my list. I still don't have investment on it, but should drop some money on it soon, and review it in one of the following weeks.

Quick guide to join it:
1)open a standard FXopen account
2) verify your FXopen account. After uploading the necessary docs, drop an email at finance@fxopen.com telling to verify your account. This email will speed up your verification process (mine took 1hour).
3) set the leverage to 1:500
4) send an email with your account number to support@pmaforex.com
5) after receiving your PMA passoword, go to: http://www.fxopen.com/Pamm/Account.aspx?Id=0bc0b03f-6bd5-482b-a4c7-f5659c31056f and join.
6) after joining confirm with support@pmaforex.com

Remember, the minimum is 100$, and the profits should be between 5-10% monthly.
It seems they have changed their strategy a bit (or are over-trading), or maybe it's due to current Euro crash (meaning there is also a Gold rush), because May profits were bigger, and this month is also returning a good profit.

Important notes about FXopen:
-if you use LR to fund your account, make sure you change you LR name to the same name you used in FXopen's account. I advise to create a separate LR account for this, and only for this, to not spread personal information.
Usually this problem doesn't happen with AP accounts, because most people use verified AP accounts, meaning you already have your name on it, that should match FXopen's account.

-do NOT mix different e-currencies in the same account. FXopen policies about this are not the "best", and usually will generate confusion. I read somewhere in the forum you will be only allowed to withdraw the same amount you deposited to each e-currency.
And I also read that if one of e-currencies used is more than 50% of total capital, then you can withdraw everything to that e-currency.
Also read that if you use various e-currencies, you will be only allowed to withdraw to your last e-currency used.

....Basically this is a big mess.
I think the last rules are:

if deposit was made using several payment methods then withdrawal to each
system is possible in the amount of deposit and
profit can be
withdrawn by payment method that was used for biggest deposit to
trading account.

when you opened your account and funded it with an e-currency you where agreeing to FXOpen's TOS which clearly states that withdrawals can only be paid via the original deposit method. Why? The reason is because FXOpen hold's funds in these e-currencies to cover the eventual withdrawals, so while you are waiting to access your 7k, imagine how much capital is locked up in FXOpen's main e-gold account(s)?

Should FXOpen be liable because e-gold was seized and subsequently shut down by the US government? The situation is a difficult one I admit that, but there is nothing that FXOpen can do until e-gold either comes back online or it is forced to liquidate it's assets.

FXopen themselves says that amounts bigger than 1000$ should be done with bank wires, because of these e-currencies risks.

News

2010-06-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

As usual, I am really busy during these days, so this will be like "express" news.

Aballong-they have re-opened! And it seems they paid all pending withdrawals. Still I agree with Lea (check her update about this topic), and if there isn't more communication, probably everyone will just withdraw and nothing more, that won't help Aballong at all.
I hope Alrea send another update explaining all the situation, and rework the plans, because the current plans are simply too unsustainable (and doesn't give the impression they were doing Arbitrage at all...40% /month...yeah sure, and with principal back).
Currently I will place Aballong on Hold, I prefer to wait a bit (and a update from Alrea) until placing it again on Paying status.
Here is the update:

Martin and I are entirely back for work and regained the majority
of our accounts and money. Martin learned from this issue and deal
differently with our bookies. Withdrawal is open again. Please
allow us up to 5 business days to handling withdrawals, Martin and
I also attempt to catch up with email, please do not submit more as
one email.

BestEthanol- received today an update stating they have a new trader for futures of Ethanol in stocks, and we should expect a better minimum after mid August.
We never know if this is true or not, but even treating it like a Ponzi I think it will start on a good time, because in late August this low season should be over (at least happened last year, with high-ROI programs booming and even long term like PTV and others), so probably it will have a better growth, able to meet this better minimum, which, considering that BE doesn't give principal back, will be still sustainable (~7.5% weekly).
There are also some bonus for new deposits, but they aren't "that" big, so hopefully is not a sign they are desperately seeking for new funds.
Here is the update:

From today onwards, we have a new agent (Matheus Antony) who trades futures of Ethanol on the New York Stock Market. This is revolutionizing our organization as we now have an extra income stream. We can guaranty from mid of August a Minimum of 1.5% on a daily basis (Monday-Friday).

As you might have realized, you get slightly less as we expected at the last few days. What is expected to continue for around 1-2 weeks. This is during a new deal and presell stage of our Farmers. We are negotiating new contracts with framers for next seasons crop. The lower returns will guaranty higher profits as we can negotiate better in the next few months.

We want to remind you Bestethanol is celebrating 6 months of being online. We already had our first result, and we are pleased to present from today up to the time of the 25th of this month, benefits on your investments, to perform 6 months being online.

For investments from $100-$1000, you will receive an 3% deposit Bonus to your account.
For investments from $1001-$2500, you will receive an 4% deposit Bonus to your account.
For investments from $2501-$5000, you will receive an 6% deposit Bonus to your account.
For investments from $5000, and higher you will receive an 8% deposit Bonus to your account.

This offer expires on our 6 month anniversary on the 25th of June 2010 at Midnight GMT.

And now the bad news for today....HighYieldClub have some pending payments, with me being one of those members waiting for it.
I already sent a ticket yesterday, but so far no answer from admin, that usually answered quickly to my tickets.
Pending + no communication = bad sign, so I moved HYC to problem list.
This was totally unexpected, as the growth was still going good for HYC...but we never know what is happening on the other side. Maybe Harry decided it was enough and cashout the money for a nice vacations, or maybe the pending payments last week were already a sign that cashflow was worst than we thought.
I hope this is just a temporary problem, but given the lack of communication...my hopes are low.

Other news
As I said before, given the current hyip market, I am looking for passive alternatives. "Passive" because they are supposed to be like hyips were we don't do nothing lol. For active my current BetFair trading is enough...in fact I even only have 50€ on my BF account to prevent the temptation of trading on world Championship, I really need to focus in my studies lol.

Still it seems there are good alternatives, with the private Arbitrage opportunity I told days ago. Remember that it will close to new members in 25th of this month, because the admin is preparing a "version 2" of the opportunity that will be a bit better for online marketers (aka ref sharks), but with lower earnings to compensate this. So if you want to secure your position in the current program you need to think quickly. I advise to place the minimum (100€) for now to secure your membership.
I am just waiting to receive funds on my PayPal account to join it.

Later, after experimenting it we will have a better opinion to decide if it is good to place more funds or not. Or take the funds out, because you are allowed to withdraw the principal at any time.

Fenix Trust Review

2010-06-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

warning: not paying!

Ok folks, like I said, I would do 2 reviews this week (and possibly two more next week).
I will start with those that answered to my emails, and Fenix Trust was the quickest of them all, meaning that at least the admin is interested to give a good image (and possibly also a indicator of good support staff).

Like I said last week, these will be like more "mini-reviews", but hopefully I won't miss the main aspects.

Plans

0.8% daily for 90 business days - minimum 50$
variable- min:0.1% avg: 1.1% , 180 business days - minimum 100$
variable- min:0.2% avg: 1.2% , 140 business days - minimum 500$
variable- min:0.3% avg: 1.5% , 120 business days - minimum 2000$
variable- min:0.5% avg: 2% , 270 business days - minimum 20.000$

Good:
-variable plans should help longevity
-I like the fact of the biggest plan lasting longer, because it means that if there are any crazy investor placing money on it, he will have to wait a long time before seeing the principal, diminishing the possible damages done by large withdrawals.

Less good:
-principal back....I am no longer a lover of it. I think receiving the principal within the earnings is much better for longevity because there isn't the "principal withdrawal syndrome".

So, the score for plans is 0
I placed my deposit on the second plan. The first is also attractive due to shorter term, but waiting 90 days with an average of 1.1% will give you back 99% ROI, meaning that after this time the risks are already low on second plan.
Note: the averages were calculated by me, using their weekly results.

Support feedback: √ (+1)

Design and content: √ (+1), professional design and the content seems to be original (at least all googled results of parts of the site redirected to Fenix site).

Script and security: √√ (+2), the script is not the usual commercial "ready to go" solutions we see. Lea said on her review that the script is familiar to her. And the same for me, I don't remember well, but it seems this isn't the first time I see it. Anyway the script seems to be well above the average.
SSL is present (and not the Comodo free trial) and site is hosted in a dedicated server by Staminus. The DDoS protection...I really don't know. Lea said on her review it was from DDosWizz, usually the sites using it shows ddoswizz nameservers on whois, and this isn't the case of Fenix. Anyway, even if it is ddoswizz, it is already something.

Payment processors: X (-1) , just LR and PM. It could have a KYC processor, like STP and/or AP. Having just LR and PM will possibly limit their max growth.

Sustainability and longevity potential
As always, the most important topic.
About the sustainability, like I said in plans, it's neither positive or negative. But taking the biggest plan as example, with an average of 10% per week, I think it could be quite sustained for a long time. If my memory is correct, SazaInvest (or a similar name) had up to 10% forever and lasted a good time.
And this plan is like forever, because 270 business days is like a year...so it's like forever and you know why lol.....(I don't think it will be there for more than a year).

For longevity, as usual, let's look to its current Alexa graphs.
First the traffic:

I think the first spike was caused by Lea's review, because the program was launched early May (at least on forums) and the review was done a couple days later.
Still, it was a moderated launch at best, and it doesn't seem to be massively advertised (at least not in forums, and most of blogs I visit).

Now let's take a look to reach graph to try to determine the current growth (impossible to do with traffic trend):

It is also "spiky", but if you take in consideration the "support" levels (lower limits) and trace a parallel line to them, it seems to have an healthy growth.
And to see it better, let's look at max time-frame:

So, here it is a possible scenario of growth, considering it maintains the current growth.
But it is still to early to make proper conclusions, and probably the real growth will slow down a bit next times, given the current market condition, and the minimum of 50$.
But I think it can survive the current low season, and if it does, then hitting the 2011 should be possible.
And let's not forget they haven't done any massive advertising campaign, so I am hopping they only use it when program gets older and too maintain a good growth in future.

So for sustainability it's 0 and longevity 0.5 (still too early...)

In the end, the final score for Fenix Trust will be 3.5/5 .
There is no doubt Fenix has a quality better than average, but also did Alpha-Money ;)
For my reviews it's sustainability and longevity (and security, always important) that influences most the final score.

As always, play safe, and remember to treat it like a game :)
I placed 100$ for now (and matched on Lions Society because Fenix wasn't part of here movers and Shakers list).

News for today

2010-06-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, I am sorry for publishing few things lately, but right now I have to give priority to my studies over the blog.
Don't expect full reviews anytime soon, but some kind "quick reviews" were I will mostly focus the reasons that led me to join them, basically the sustainability and longevity topic, because it is the topic I believe you all like more in my blog.

Unfortunately the admins are not replying to my emails....and this is a fundamental point, because not replying is a sign they don't care too much about their site, otherwise they would do their best to please me (after all I will do a review of their program).
And I don't understand...the reviews are free. Here is a copy of the email I sent them:

Hello,
I am the admin of www.dvdhyip.blogspot.com and I would like to ask if you are interested in being reviewed in my blog.

It is completely free :)

David

I am open to suggestions for a different email style, because it seems this one is not good attracting answers lol, because out of 5 emails only one admin answered.
Anyway I still think I will introduce those programs, after all their plans and Alexa growth looks good. But obviously my deposit on them will much lower than I initially planning.

Expect 1-2 programs added to my list each week, no more than that because I don't like to rush things :) , and those with responsive admins have priority.

And as I told before, for each deposit I make, I will deposit the same amount on Lea's Lions Society, as a backup/alternative strategy, just in case something goes wrong in my side (or on her, nothing is risk-free).

For now, here are the most recent news.

CherryShares-received another update about the hyip.com problems:

First of all, we want to wish you a great weekend ahead of you and for
those who love soccer - wonderful moments watching the World Cup! We
really hope you will have good time both watching the tournament and
knowing that on each day there is one company that pays your
interestes, without any delays at all!

You all have witnessed these days the confrontations that we had with
administration of hyip.com. They are over now! After a very
professional correspondence and exchange of mutual courtesy we`ve
managed to get to a compromise. We defended our position and stated
again that *we were not aware* about some of hyip.com listing rules.
After some investigation that included also the communication with
hyip.com administrator, we did find out that such rules are fully
merited and are supported by evidence to a great degree.

Also, after making thorough analysis of Money News Online site, we did
conclude that the presentation style and the attitude are not a
suitable advertising area for such a program as ours. In every action
that we take, we don`t want to harm our reputation and also our
flawless approach to our customers. Therefore, we decided to withdraw
our previous advertisement order with MNO. We also know that there are
a big number of customers that will share the same opinion with us.

We wish you all the best and let`s enjoy this great summer with goals
on your scree and cashflow in your accounts!

I really would like to know these rules...I searched on google but had no luck.
My guess would be:
-no advertising in competition;
-send me more money and everything will be alright.

Conclufing, hyip.com is nothing but full of crap. This is not the first time that happens, and the only thing it does is damaging the programs.

Hey maybe I should also introduce the following rule in my blog:
-no programs listed on hyip.com will be allowed here. Why? Simply, imagine everything is ok with those programs and then the admins remember to advertise on MNO. Probably hyip.com will make some fuss, that can damage the reputation of this program and even diminish the longevity...

So my rule is fully backed up with some logic. Fortunately hyip.com doesn't have much power, so even if it makes some fuss about a certain hyip, it won't make too much damage.

If hyip.com likes to downrate a program, at least give proper reasons/facts to do it, so we all can discuss if the reasons are right or not.

BestEthanol- dropped StrictPay for new deposits. Honestly it is a good move, considering current SP state:

Even with the newsletter today from Strictpay, we decided to drop Strictpay as a transaction type. Once Strictpay is processing routine business, we will add them again. From today, we do not accept Strictpay investments. Payments can still be processed in Strictpay.

TopFinancial going down??

2010-06-08T16:20:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems there are multiple complains of accounts getting hacked (all with big amounts) and then these accounts had withdrawals disabled.

Is this a sign that Top is going down?
Frankly I was expecting it would fall, altough not so soon, like I told here, 3 weeks ago:

Top-Financial: I never joined it because I didn't like the bold lie "since 1996". But the program was much better than I thought. But the growth hasn't been good since early March (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/topfinancial.com#). I think it is suffering the "GeniusFund domino effect", because it stopped growing when Genius started falling, and people started to be more afraid to place money on long-term hyips.
This also happened to Infinitiva (that is gone) and lots of others sites. But there are still some sites that haven't been affected, like HYTFund (edit: sadly this one is gone too...).

I can't give a proper advice for TOP, because it is a program with quality and all, but given the current growth I would avoid it.

And recent plans were a clear indicator they were needing money, or preparing to close the shop.
Let's see their Alexa trend:

So it is a bit strange...although it faced almost 2 months of no growth, it was picking up again, and I would expect to last another month, or a bit more (the first deposits should expire in ~50 days).
So why did the admin decided to kill already? I have two opinions about it:
-first, admin greed. After seeing his program facing a moment of lack of growth (practically bleeding money), and then seeing a growth of deposits again, the admin took the opportunity to open the new, more attractive plan, to fill the pockets even quicker to run away.
Although I think if he maintained the Top one more month, the deposits influx could increase, because ~4 days with the new plan wasn't enough to attract the investors (and may have even scared them).

-alternative theory: this lack of growth affected more than it appears at first sight.
Let's take a look at Alexa trend again, this time in the max timeframe:

As we see here, the lack of growth was a serious thing, considering the lifespan of Top and its fast growth, being as much as 1/3 of its online life (only considering until its start growing again).
Imagine, a program with a really fast growth, spending thousands per week in advertising on major forums, suddenly faces a total lack of growth (it's not even a slow down, but a pure stall on its growth)....maybe it caused much more damage than we thought.
The admin might tried to increase the influx of deposits again with the plan, but probably ended up scaring the investors and/or had not the expected growth.

Or maybe none of these theories is right lol, we never know what's going on the other side.
Either way,one more giant that it's falling.

News

2010-06-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

updated: there was a mistake with Cherry image...corrected.

High Yield Club- today we got a unpleasant update:

We need to confess a miscalculation on our part. About the reinvestment possibility and the low entry in our biweekly plan we missed some of the investments. It is the reason why a few individuals have got a pending withdrawal. This issue should be paid in a short while we were already loading our account with ecardone. Please do not worry and we like to clarify it is truthfully pending on less than 10 people, rest was paid.

We learned from the circumstance and increase the lowest deposit of our biweekly plan to USd$2500, no amount under can be reinvested or invested in this plan. The daily plan is unchanged. Gain from the existent biweekly plan owner are unchanged.

But it doesn't seem to be a big deal. I have already asked the admin and he told that currently there is only pending that should also be processed soon (if was not already...).

For me it seems they got a bit short of LR (thus the eCardOne reference).
Was this a bad sign? Don't know, but good to see admin taking quick measures.
Also the Alexa trend shows a growth again:

I have checked the major forums and didn't saw any major complain, which is a good sign, because it won't scare new investors.

About the change in bi-weekly plans, I believe it was a good measure, mainly on the 35% plan (now the minimum is 15.000), meaning very few people will join this plan, that was a bit unsustainable on long run.
This change, if the program survives enough to liquidate all current 35% plans, will for sure help his longevity.

The overall picture:
-admin fighting/caring for his program;
-alexa trend picking up again;
-no complains on forums;

Things seem to look favorable for HYC. Now it depends on next weeks growth (we still don't know the impact of this update, but hopefully won't do any major harm).
To HYC admin, thanks for the quick reply to my ticket about this :)

CherryShares-I am currently not investing on it, but as a member I keep receiving updates.
So, I am going to publish it anyway (even if it is just for future reference):

You have probably saw what happened lately on the well-known site
hyip.com. They have lowered the rating to zero due to the fact that
we have bought advertising with their competitor MNO. We didn`t do
anything else besides this. However, the administration of the site
decided to destroy our reputation and name simply because we bought
advertising from their competitors. We really don`t think it is fair
to act like that simply because we supported by paying advertising
their direct competitor. In the end, isn`t democratic market about
this - live and let live? Now, we don`t pledge for MNO, we are simply
trying to point out that such actions that hyip.com did doesn`t seem
reasonable to us. Therefore, all the questions you may have regarding
to our poor rating there, please address to the administrator. We bear
no guiltiness in what happened and we really don`t want to think that
we are a scam, just because of a site who has an odd advertising
policy.

So, the same old story from hyip.com . Of course he eventually will be right when he does this kind of things, but could give a much better explanation than:

All HYIP.COM users and visitors are now strongly advised against investments with CherryShares (CherryShares.com). All current users are recommended to withdraw only and to make an effort requesting early withdrawal of invested principal. As it was the case with previously issued valid alerts, this one is triggered by as definitive eminent failure signs uncovering fraudulent intent of administration. CherryShares.com has now been downgraded to "zero" rating on HYIP.COM and all current program users are encouraged to report payouts and any issues in the corresponding thread of our forums.

He could give us the signs lol, at least we could discute and maybe learn some tricks.
Taking hyip.com and MNO rivalries aside, I think one of the signs that could be considered is the advertising in MNO, because as we know it usually brings a fast growth for a while, that if it isn't maintained, it could kill the program faster.
Also, the abuse of MNO power to make a quick buck before running away lol.

But usually admins go to MNO when things are not looking good / bad growth.
And in CherryShares, the Alexa was showing a good growth (maybe a bit inflated because with the daily plan members probably visit more frequently to withdraw the earnings):

So, maybe admin decided it was time to pull MNO card of the hand to keep the growth momentum going on.
Of course there is always the maybe :)

Also, there is a funny thing. Paul (from MNO) said he added CherryShares due to members requests, and I read on shout-box it was for free, and because he liked the program:

Tom, some readers asked me to add this program to my listing so I did. Nobody paid me for that!

and

And now Cherry's admin tell:

due to the fact that
we have bought advertising with their competitor MNO

Now, who's telling the truth?
Hyips admins are not properly the most honest guys....and if he lied it was a really stupid move...
And shame on hyip.com for starting this mess.

The Role of Market Acceptance

2010-06-06T06:56:00.001-07:00

Hello folks, today I am bringing this article because I forgot to talk a bit about "market acceptance" in my previous articles about using Alexa to forecast big launches, good growths,...

I will take InvestiHeaven as the example, because a fellow blogger did an article about it and asked my opinion about it. I already commented on his blog, but I felt that I should also "comment" here :)

So, let's take a look at the Alexa graph shown on his blog:

Looking at it we clearly see that it had a huge launch, that probably will shorten its life.
Also, this big launch was caused by the review of MNO one (or two) days after the launch.

Ok, this graph looks bad, but it is still early to "predict" its possible life...
Why? Well, we already know the big launch, but we don't know how the "market acceptance" will be.
Let's take a look at True Earn graph, because it was one of most successful high-ROI hyips recently:

As you can see, it even had a bigger launch than InvestiHeaven. But then the market accepted it quite well (probably the collapse of many long-term hyips led people to look at shorter-term programs), leading to a favorable growth till middle of May.
Of course the admin role is also important, and probably bought the banners in a way to promote this growth.

Another note for this graph, we can easily see the lack of growth for almost half month. I suspect the program survived well this "lack of growth" because it had already a dominant status among the high-ROI programs (it was in first position on MNO), that probably lead to a healthy rate of re-deposits, contributing to it's longer life.
But, as expected, without growth it was doomed to collapse.

Now, what about InvestHeaven?
As I told, it is still early to see in Alexa graph if there is a good market acceptance or not.

My opinion is:
-good looking, attractive;
-it has all popular PPs at the moment, allowing it to reach all possible investors;
-and mainly, it has a daily plan (10x12) that diminishes the risks. And this is important because waiting 12 days without money is too much for the current market (where lots of high-ROI programs fall quickly). Very few are willing to risk 12 straight days.
So with lower risks, more people will be willing to join it, even if the program is no longer new.

Also, let's not forget that the "dominant" high-ROI program, True Earn, is gone, changing the market conditions. But I believe this is a sword with two edges:
-in one side InvestiHeaven won't need to compete with it, making its life easier;
-but in other side, True Earn collapse is still vivid on investors memory, and can create a "fear" on market, resulting in less potential investors for InvestiHeaven.

So, at the end of next week we probably will have a better picture of market acceptance of InvestiHeaven, or in other words, a good growth on Alexa trend (or lack of it).

Also, today's Alexa graph already reveals a "support" level:

Now we just need to start seeing a nice growth from now on. The next "support level" should be bigger than the first. If it is below, then the growth is probably declining.

This is a bit like analyzing Forex charts, checking the "Bullish"(up trend) and "Bearish" (down trend) levels.

To summary: once again, Alexa alone is not enough to do a proper forecast, market conditions, market acceptance and program characteristics (risk vs reward, it's important for the acceptance of the program among investors, for example).
And sometimes we need to wait a bit until Alexa's graph reveals better the story.

I hope this article is useful for all of you :)

News (InvestProxy Reloaded)

2010-06-05T14:46:00.001-07:00

Once again we have another joke from InvestProxy:

Cashout And Payments

Dear dvdhyip blog,

As we work to ensure that everyone receives their payments on time, we believe we should also let you know of some of our immediate plans.

We have stopped using StrictPay.
StrictPay has become so worthless that we feel there is no need accepting more payments through StrictPay or making further payments through StrictPay as the money will be worth nothing. We are sure it has become obvious to everyone by now that StrictPay is dead. There is strong doubt it will ever recover.

None of the people we paid with StrictPay over the last few days has been able to withdraw their money from StrictPay directly or indirectly through exchangers as there are hardly any exchangers accepting StrictPay exchanges now. We had more than $20,000 paid out, and it pains us that money is worth nothing to the recipients now. We also have $8350 and can certainly say that money is also worth nothing now or in the future.

From what we heard too, we suspect SolidTrustPay is having some sort of problem too. Their consistent difficulties in funding debit cards and long delays in processing withdrawals point to some uncertain future. We suggest you make your own calculations and be watchful. We have some funds in our SolidTrustPay account but we did not truely use their services on InvestProxy.Com.

Many people have wondered why we are online this long. The answer is simple. We have one single believe that nobody will be scammed, so we are still working to ensure everyone gets paid. As many can testify, we have always kept our promises. We will bring smile to your face and InvestProxy will take a prominent position in this industry.

Have a fruitful weekend.

Now...why did they sent this update?? Just to bash SP and STP? What about paying the pending payments?
Dear InvestProxy admin, may I suggest something? Just use LibertyReserve, easy to buy in large quantities and pretty much every member would be able to accept it (those that don't have an account can easily open one and then exchange it).

I agree with MNO about this...clearly InvestProxy has a connection with a Payment Processor (I gave the hint on my review).

ForexNetClub also sent a strange update. I say strange because it is an interview with an unknown person, and I would expect at least a site/blog/whatever this interviewer owns.
Well, on good side I am amazed with FNC longevity given the current market situation and lack of FNC's growth. But great, great would be seeing it surviving this low season.

Here is the interview:

We are glad to present you the following interview with Mr. Michael Brown:

1. Let's start by introducing yourself, who are you and who else is involved in your great site?

Hello! My name is Michael Brown and I am head of customer support. I have a big experience in the public relations field so this is why i was elected for this job. Besides me, there are my colleagues who represent phone support for other languages and also Mr.Vugt, our Online Manager.

2. Can you tell me also about your Company setup, what company do you have? Would you allow us to have a look into the company papers?

ForexNetClub Ltd. is a regulated Marshall Islands financial institution since 2007 under file 27407, currently providing tax-free offshore investments, with a shareholder capital of USD 5 000 000. The operations behind ForexNetClub Ltd. are managed by strict regulations and our corporate philosophy is based on the highest of standards with regard to our business practices. These regulations require that financial trading firms maintain enough liquid reserve capital to cover their deposits and operate under a fair and equitable principle of trade.

You can view ForexNetClub Ltd. company documents or samples of our forex trading records in "Due Diligence" section of your FNC account.

3. Explain a little how you make money for your clients, and tell me a little about how you can archive such high return in such a short time?

We operate on Foreign Exchange, as it is by far the easiest way towards generate quick profits. When i look into the ForEx market and see how quickly you can earn money there, I realize that this is all about knowing - a combined knowledge of mathematics and economics makes it all to work! Why only big players like banks and Wall Street gurus should have only winning situations in ForEx? Our trading team shows you that it is possible to earn such big money! We have some of the best traders in the world gathered around a dedicated team towards common purposes - prosperity, success and sharing of wealth with customers.

4. Why should we invest in your program and what makes your different from other ones?

I have been asked this questions so many times before...You know, each one of us has the freedom to make choices, and these choices are influenced, most of the time of the benefit that they will get after making a choice. ForexNetClub.net investment opportunity is a choice that they could done 2 months ago and doubled their money! And if they didn't, then they are not in benefit. The good thing is that we are here for such a long term that our users have the chance to change their minds at anytime! Time will tell what are the real businesses and what are the outlaws!

5. What are the payment processors you use?

At this moment we use Perfect Money, Liberty Reserve and bank wires for the most "in need" persons who can't trust an e-currency. We will diversify our online payment processors range if we will feel that our users are not satisfied by the actual ones. But, at this point we are very glad and the business has a continuous grow.

6.Can you explain how to go about joining your program?

We thought about this also and we even made a special help for our users who are not acquainted with online investment programs or e-currencies. So, they can find a mini-training here - http://forexnetclub.net/getstarted.htm. We called it Education Center!

7. A question I always like to ask is, what is the most difficult part on your business, what did you not expect or would do different when you would start, with the knowledge you gain since you launched FNC?

First of all, we would have started earlier! Yes, this is one little mistake we've made. If we would have started like 5 years ago, know we were the "ruling company" of online investments, without any doubts! The hardest part in our business is the relations with customers. They always want a quick answer, quick withdrawals to their accounts and so on...So, speed is the word for customers. You can imagine that it is not that easy for us, a bunch of people, to deal with thousands. Customer's satisfaction is not a hard thing to get if you are dedicated towards your business, it's just tricky!

8. How secure is your program? Is the website protected from malicious-hacking attempts and/or DDos attacks?

We use the latest and the strongest SSL encryption technology to ensure that your account is access in the mose secure environment. We have the highest level DDos attack Protection, keeping your account safe and secure from such attacks. Also, we made a special page for our users in order to educate them how to protect their PCs and how to avoid the fund loss, because most often there is a fund loss from the user's side than from our side. Please get well educated here - http://forexnetclub.net/securityinfo.htm

9. What kind of customer support do you offer? What is the best and most efficient way to contact you if I have any questions? I see you have Live Chat and telephone support. What are the best times (GMT) to find a support operator there?

One of our strongest advantages over competitors is that ForexNetClub Ltd. provides various types of support services for our customers’ convenience and help them to get in touch with company. We have English & Spanish Support at +1.347.632.1735 and for Europe: +44.20.3286.0156. Also, you can send emails to General Inquiries: support@ForExnetclub.net; Payment issues: payments@ForExnetclub.net; Partnership inquiries: partners@ForExnetclub.net; Testimonials: testimonials@ForExnetclub.net. The most convenient and fastest way to contact us is by using our live chat support operators.

10. How do you see the future of your program?

Shining! With even more members and with even more happier faces! Our primary goals is to bring a change in people's life! If we have this incredible opportunity of making such big amounts of money, why not share it with the others? We really want our members to enjoy life at its full, at least from the material point of view.. Very soon, new changes will be done to ForexNetClub.net so that it suits better the interests of our clients! Trust and friendship - these are the words that link our investors to our team! ForexNetClub deserves to be on everybody's Movers and Shakers list! I'd like to be asked if i am happy with FNC, because I am! This company is giving shape to my dreams and helps me build my life as I never did before. Stick with us and you will never lose! FNC rocks your life!

Do not hesitate to contact us with any question you might have.

Well I have one question to FNC's admin: could you offer a PAMM account (with low minimum of course)? ;)

Is really investors fault?

2010-06-03T04:54:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist to publish an article about this :)

As you know recently RogerVille collapsed, and I was particularly amazed by the update provided by the admin, blaming members for this failure:

It is with mixed emotions that I inform everyone today that RogerVille has to close today. I watched as the deposits declined the past week. Now it has reached its last day online, with only less than $100 deposited today and about the same yesterday and some hundreds the past weeks. The support that RogerVille has received has declined by a huge margin. This is because of the thinking of many that at this stage a program is not worth depositing more into anymore because it has reached 30 days? Well I hope this attitude of depositors stop soon because this is what killed RogerVille. It may be applicable to some sites but supposed to not be on RogerVille.com.

Please be advised that the deposits today are to be refunded fully. And that is all that we can do as you know this is how I handle sites I have when I close them. No refunds are issued because everyone knows what they are getting into and not an investment site. Everything up front and all cards laid in front of you.

You know how serious I am when I manage my sites and yet some still do not play it with me. We had a good site going but the terrible attitude of too old, too late thing killed it. Next time please, when I am the admin, be assured that I will only manage the program properly and so you can continuously support it so we can make a long lasting program.

We just need to eliminate that attitude that kills programs.

So, he is blaming members for taking an hit-and-run strategy, and not reinvesting.
Although this is right, why don't he also take a look at his own flaws:
-brought the program when there was a dominant short-term program (TrueEarn), that had better plans and already had the "dominant" status that provided it a good life.
-also, due to recent collapse of almost all long-term programs led to a survival instinct on investors, leading to a bigger number of hit and runners;
-so, shame on hit for not taking serious measures to avoid hi and runners;
-also, why didn't he avoided a huge launch? He could have a longer program if he aimed for a slow and steady growth until it reaches the "dominant" status, where people aren't afraid to reinvest;
-instead of being innovative, he brought "the same old story"...

So, yes, members caused a short lifespan of RogeVille, but his update was totally unnecessary, because he should look first to his own flaws!

A well managed site will surely last much longer. Don't believe? Then look at thevaults.net, a surf program that offers from 120% to 144% after 12 days.
And...it is online for at least 6 months (judging by the forums). Oh, and supposedly surf industry is dead lol.

How could this program last so long? It simply used a clever system to promote a reinvestment mentality and avoid hit and runners.
Basically you had to start in the 10$ plan and when you finish it, you are allowed to invest on 20$ level, and so on until you reach 1500$.
Of course starting with 10$ doesn't please everyone, so you are allowed to have multiple accounts, although you have to met the surf requirements to earn on each of them, which is a barrier for those users wanting to have tons of accounts to avoid this level-by-level system.

Important note: vaults recently added "investor" plans of 50$ and 100$, allowing new members to avoid the requirement of starting on 10$ level. It could hurt the program, but the admin told on forum that the site is in good health to allow these plans, and I tend to agree with him, because after all this time online they probably have now good reserves, and there is an important catch: with these plans you are not allowed to upgrade to bigger levels.
Usually new plans are bad sign, but maybe this isn't the case.
Anyway, proceed carefully if you decide to invest on it.

So, Roger, learn with this program and implement a similar system on your next program to incentive people to reinvest, and remember that the longer the program stays online, the bigger will be support (reinvestments) from members.

But this article isn't over yet (sorry if I am boring you lol)....
Look again at the update and see the parts that I changed to bold:

" No refunds are issued because everyone knows what they are getting into and not an investment site"

and

"continuously support it so we can make a long lasting program."

Lol, Roger surely knows how to incentive people to support him next time xD
Basically he tells "those of you that supported me....well bad luck, no refunds!" and then tell to support him next time.....
Maybe if he tried to refund as much he could to those members in loss (even a small refund would be better than nothing), then next time people would support him more.
Instead...he is incentiving people to hit and run even more on his next programs.

That's why I told at beginning of this article that his update was totally unnecessary.

Hyips = games?

2010-05-29T01:11:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, today I am bringing a slightly different article once again, because there are no news from the programs I am investing (which actually is good, I like quiet programs).

Recently I saw some posts in GNI's thread at ASA that saddened me a lot, because I see lots of people that lost big amounts because they invested in December, lured by Robert's words that "everything was just fine" and was better to hurry up because it would close to new investments soon (how many times did they said that?).
So I decided to bring this article, to try my best to convince all of you to treat all hyips as "games", or better, as bets. Keep in mind I won't follow the same "professionalism" I try to do in other articles, but just bring my personal opinion, experiences and thoughts.

Longer readers of my blog already know I am a bit "geek", after all I was on IT engineering course for some time, and I couldn't resist to use Nvidia's TWIMTBP logo here, modified with my fantastic Paint.net+PowerPoint skills (yeah photoshop isn't cheap lol).
I just hope Nvidia doesn't sue me.....

So, everytime you decide to join an online venture, remember this image and that hyips (or any other online venture) are meant to be "played" and not to place your life/retirement savings.

Even if they appear to be real (or even if they are real), you will do much better decisions if you treat them like a game, and will easily spot when it is heading the south route.

Let's take GNI example: I honestly admit I thought it was real when I joined it, after all it was online for a good time, everybody was happy with it, and the concept seemed to doable.
But luckily, for me, I started to have my own doubts about it, and the boiling point was the "charity" thing, because it was strange their decision to use 2 unknown and dubious charities instead Red-Cross or MSF, which are much more known, and with a relatively good back track.

I placed that question in ASA forum, and the answer I (and other people with the same doubts) from GNI was "it's our decision, and if you are not happy just don't give money to it".
This answer was "lame", because I was expecting them to tell the reasons of their choice.

And suddenly I start seeing GNI as a "game", and everything that was happening started to have logic:
-all the problems that appeared and caused delays in payments were probably cashflow problems and they were buying time by blaming PPs and other things;
-the "everything was ok", despite the referral abuses (and no action from them) was to play with our emotions, to make us thinking "damn ref shark abusers, it's not GNI fault at all, let's support it". And was also an excuse to buy time for the delayed payments.
-the "going private" was also playing with our mind, to make us build our accounts, instead of withdrawing as much as we could. Don't you remember that they were always delaying the privatization?
- the bank problems...ok it might happened, but they kept saying "everything is fine", playing again with our emotions.
- their answer to the dubious charities: telling that was their decision and if we weren't happy we could just not give money to it, or even leave GNI. Again: emotional play, to make us thinking "ok, if they are telling to leave GNI, then it's because they are serious about all this, let's support them".
Remember that the same ploy "leave when you want if you are not happy with us" was also used by PTV.

After seeing all this, I quickly made my own conclusions and started cashing out from GNI (and I am glad I did it), and advised to do the same in my blog. I remember receiving furious emails and comments on shout-box. Most people were already too emotionally attached to it to see the red flags that were appearing on GNI.
The same happened with GeniusFunds, when I told the end was near...but in this case people were less attached to it.

But let's continue with GNI story (I am sorry if this is boring for you, but I want you to fully understant an important thing with this):

-then GNI suddenly had to be rebuilt, another excuse to delay payments. I still can't understand how people believed in Robert words. Seriously, how can a real business just do a "balance report" in the beginning of the year. I mean, they were always telling "everything was fine", and then suddenly everything is NOT fine, and only at that time they discovered the bets were doing fine, and that 6-7,5% weekly wasn't possible, and that ref abuses and bank suspension were worst than they thought.

I think that a "business" that pays weekly interest should at least do a "performance report" on a weekly basis, to check if the targets are met, and if adjustments are needed.
And what about ref abuses and bank account suspended? When they happened "everything was fine"...why were they only giving problems now?

And once again, peopled believed this, and they were so emotionally attached to it that I saw posts on GNI's private forum as absurd as: "who is on verge of depositing more?" and "looking carefully, the new plans are even better". This was just mind-blowing for me.

-then, after more and more delays, GNI sent a nice email with blonde jokes to try to gather some more deposits. This was another clear red flag, because they never sent such emails directly telling people to invest more. And the blond jokes were probably to make people forget the delayed payments. Once again: emotional ploy.

-then, a few weeks later they announce that GNI is closed. Errr...so some weeks before everything was on good track to recovery, and now this?
Thankfully, most people finally opened the eyes, but it amazes me that there are still people defending GNI, and attached to it.

----off-topic----
now talking about current GNI refunds....I finally got their strategy, and why they delayed the refunds two months (and still paying them in a very slow rate).
It's simple (if we treat it like a game), during this long time they could have opened different programs to gather funds for the refunds.

It makes sense and logic.

And probably this people that got refunded will deposit into GNI 2....because they will be emotionally attached.
(I heard that GNI 2 will be paying more interest than GNI 1 in recovery mode...does it make sense?)
-----/off-topic-----

So, after this long and boring (and sad) story, did you get the main point?

Emotions.....

And to summary, here are the two golden rules that you should always follow (not strategic at all, but to help you making better decisions):
#1- never, ever, get emotionally attached to an online program. Treat all them as games!
It will seriously help you, believe me.

#2- jump from a program when admins' start playing too "psychological", especially when there are problems with the program.
Not only this will be good to your wallet, but also to your health, because you will avoid the stress when the program falls, and the frustration for having believed in the admin words.

And if the program survives and is real (highly improbable), then you can admit your mistake of jumped from it, and return to it, if things look good again.

So start treating hyips as "games", and not your ultimate financial tool that will make you rich.

Some facts about hyips

There are some questions that are sometimes done my by some of my readers. Well, in reality, these are questions but facts:

Fact 1- when you win money on hyips, someone else is losing!
Simple as that.
How do I feel about it:
-if people play them as games, then I don't feel bad at all. After all this also happens in Forex, Stocks and Bets (exchangers, like BetFair).

Take the BetFair example: I have been doing money on it, and I am fully aware that I am winning someone's else money. And seriously I don't feel bad with this idea, because I suppose most people that play on BetFair are aware of the risks.

-now if people take hyips as "real", then it saddens me a lot, mainly when I see posts on forums of people that desperately placed life funds, hoping to earn some good money, and then lose it all.
I am not talking about those regular "whiners" that lose 2 bucks and make a lot of noise on forums when are scammed. I am talking about those who lose big (really big) amounts of money.

Fact 2 - hyips are not a zero-sum game
Neither is forex, stocks and bets world, because all of them have commissions.

But in hyips this is much worse, because usually admins take huge cuts of the total money "traded" on their hyips.
So if you simply invest/punt in many different hyips, just because of having a big "portfolio" then you will lose on the long run, unless you are a lucky person.

That's why it is important to make a good "due-diligence", not to determine if the hyip is real (some people claim this is the real DD), but to determine if it will be a good "game" and if odds are in your side.
And there is the reason I have so few program at moment, and why I am too picky....because I don't care about current program status or if it is paying now, I care most if it will be playing in future, and mainly if I will reach the 100% ROI.
Well, I am already stretching too much here, and strategies and money-management will be another article.

Fact 3- Hyips are a jungle
Now a days, most admins don't care about their program, and as soon things go south they will pull the plug and run away.

Ok, I think this article is already long enough, and these facts should be enough to put some fear on most readers.
Remember, treat hyips like games. Not a game in the gamble meaning, but a game where you don't get too attached to it.
As far I know, the most successful traders in forex and stocks have cold blood when doing the trades, and try to put all emotional aside. So it's logical to apply the same "cold-blood" in hyips.

I hope you find this article useful, not only for hyips, but also other online and offline ventures.

Atox: the good example

2010-05-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Hello once again folks, it seems the article about Alpha-Money created a considerable amount of fuzz, and many readers liked it.
I am glad you find it "educational" and I hope it helps your strategy in future.

Now I will talk about Atox, because it is a good example for two reasons.

The first reason.... it is about Alexa trend:

This is why I say to treat Alexa as an indicator (like those you use on Forex and Stocks), because this is one of those examples where I couldn't "forecast" the longevity, because using Alexa pattern, I would give it a couple months of life if I had analyzed it in early February, as it was already failing to grow after a big launch.

However Alexa pattern helped to determine the big launch and avoid it, and in fact at that time I was doing my "baby-steps" applying Alexa to low-ROI long-term programs and wasn't yet aware of how powerful Alexa was as an indicator.
But I already knew how to use it to spot big launches on high-ROI programs :)

So, my reasons to avoid Atox were:
a) the big launch,
b) that was probably caused by the 10$ they offered at launch (found it thanks to MNO review), and usually programs doing it don't last long. Of course there are exceptions, like Atox itself (survived much more than I expected) and HYFund.
c)was practically the same thing of IncoForex, no innovation at all. And after seeing its big launch, I would prefer much more IncoForex than it.

So, the main point is: Alexa trend is just a tool/indicator. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it is right, and sometimes it is wrong. That's why we need to look to the overall picture.

Now the second reason of why Atox is a good example: it is a perfect example of how admins abuse of MNO influence to fill the pockets before closing the shop.

Thanks to ThinkPink blog, I noticed that Atox did an interview with MNO a couple days ago.
As I told in Alpha-Money's article, it's better to be careful when there is an interview on MNO.

In Alpha-Money case, I have a few doubts if it was done with the purpose of filling pockets before runnig away, because it took 5 days before considering closing the shop, and maybe during these 5 days they were waiting to see if the popularity would rise again or not.

But with Atox...well, there are no doubts. The interview was done in May 25th, just a couple days ago.
And there is more info that clearly shows Atox intentions were to scam after the interview (thanks to ThinkPink shout-box):

Hi TP. Atox plan with 3 days for expiration yesterday and shows 4 days today...everything ok? Boa viagem

Details 2010-05-20 2:01 PM

and

Hi TP, my atox plan should have matured last week and still shows 2 days left. I´ve sent 2 tickets with no answer.

Details 2010-05-26 1:58 PM

So, there was already problems paying principals before the MNO interview.
This is why I say: MNO big influence = more power to scammers, because it makes their life easier by abusing of this influence.

Now to make clear, I am not a MNO hater, in fact I read it every days and I find it a very useful source of information, mainly because he publishes news on a daily basis, and the reviews (if you ignore the promotion part) also offer useful info.
The problem it's its too big power coupled with the lack of selection of hyips (from what I know every admin that pays will have his spot and review, but I can't confirm this 100%).
So I advise to continue reading it because like I told in Alpha-Money's article, MNO plays an important role in overall picture of this industry.

We just need to learn to use it in our favor :) (like be twice careful when a interview is published, and check growth when a review is published).

BestEthanol news

2010-05-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

It seems that BE finally got an answer from AP. Things aren't still looking good for their account, but it is already a good development:

We are pleased to notify you all pending Alertpay withdrawals are handled.Our Alertpay account is 45 days on hold.The payments today are settled as we have a backup fund.To explain the circumstance,we got a deposit from somebody who had a fraud account,therefor all funds on the account is locked for 45 days.As we have proofed our business the account has been reopened,excluding all existing funds are on hold.What is interrupting the normal business with Alertpay.We will have a meeting this weekend if we continue accepting Alertpay.For now we are accepting Alertpay.As it helps us to pay the demands for tomorrow (this means up to the time our account is fully reopened,or our money transfer hit Alertpay,we are forced to run a snowball scheme for Alertpay clients).We already send money to fill up our account.So business as usual should be expected soon with Alertpay.We still consider to at least suspend Alertpay deposits (not withdrawals) for the future.

Like I said previously, there aren't major complains in forums, so I guess this wasn't a popular PP in BE, and probably won't hurt it too much.

News

2010-05-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, we finally have some news :)

BestEthanol- it seems AP is not helping them at all. Unfortunately we never know the full story of what happened, and sometimes some complains from dirty competitors can "help" the suspension of the account.
I like AP mostly because of its withdrawal options in my country, but sometimes they could have a better support to handle these suspension cases.

Fortunately, it seems AP wasn't a popular processor used on BestEthanol, because the payments for this PP are pending since last Friday, and I don't see too much "noise" on major forums.
In fact, the only bad thing I saw about BE was that it was managed by "russian scammers" lol. But he failed to provide decent arguments.

And it seems the BE admin is handling this mess in a good way, instead of paying AP pending payments with other e-currencies (which can hurt cashflow on them) he decided to penalize only AP users, and they will have to wait until the access to the account is restored or can chargeback the deposit.

AP is a good PP that gives us some protection, but we also have this risk of facing blocked accounts, and in these situations I think the program shouldn't be hurt by it (or use it to close the shop like some admins do), and since the AP process refunds, let them do their job refunding the members that used this PP, probably with a loss due to the ponzi nature.
Sure these members won't be happy, but the rest of members will appreciate not having a program going down.

Either way, it is good to see BE fighting this issue.

We still have no reactions from Alertpay,and when I tried to call,I waited 45 minutes in a holding line.So I was giving up.We want to work on a fair solution in case Alertpay does not help us in this matter.We first planned to pay in a different Payment option,like Liberty Reserve, Perfect Money or Solidtrustpay.Please understand we have no possibility to check if somebody did a back charge or demanded a refund in Alertpay.So we would pay investors,who might not have any investment in Bestethanol anymore. It is the reason,wherefore Walter suspended Alertpay as a payment possibility in the script.Until Alertpay is serving us in this issue.If you need a quicker result,please demand a refund in Alertpay,and we will revoke this investment as soon we have access to Alertpay again.Everybody who awaits to have access to Alertpay again,will be paid as soon we have the access restored.Please be advised,we do not have access,so we cannot pay or check on any investment be back charged or invested.This issue is out of our hands.

Alike condition occurred with Global Digital Pay,as we are not receiving the SMS and the letter is not arrived with us.Anyway Global Digital Pay does not provide back charges,so we allow here the investors used Global Digital Pay to withdraw in any other Payment option.Please contact us for this matter.Global Digital Pay will be removed totally,so please contact us for your preferred other payment option.As we will trade and pay in this selection.

Please be also notified,I strongly believe Alertpay will communicate soon about this matter.As we raised a few Tickets.So the Alertpay issue might be fixed within a few hours,or most days.There is no different problem in delaying payments,we simply can't access the account.

Thank you for your understanding
Mario

HighYieldClub- they issued a update telling about current Forex conditions (the fall of Euro...it is bad for Europe and Portugal, but at same time good for me because the exchange USD->EUR will be much better), and volatibility arbitrage, something I know nothing about:

EUR/USD started today with 1.2285 (7:35 AM), the last 24 hours it was on a rock button of 1.2273, the USD was against the JPY at 89.95 EUR-JPY was with 110.45, and the EUR-CHF with 1.4270. This means the Euro Zone is still falling. In the USA there could be Banks falling again about this. Last year 73 Banks failed.

Why is this good for us?

The market is falling, and a good trader can make money in a falling or gaining market. We trade against the Market now, and gain higher profits as we did the last few months.

Let me clarify how HighYieldClub actually makes money. Our Team is doing Volatility arbitrage, or short vol arb. In the HYIP arena, this mainly means sport betting. This is not what we do. Volatility arbitrage is statistical arbitrage. What is executed by trading a delta natural portfolio and its underlier.

Engaging in volatility arbitrage , an option contract is a method to speculate in the volatility of the underlying rather than a directing bet on the underlier's price. If our trader purchases options as part of a delta-neutral portfolio, it is said to be long volatility. If he vends options, he is said to be short volatility. As the trading is done delta-neutral, purchasing an option is a bet that the underlier's fate understood volatility will be high, while selling an option is a bet that fate understood volatility will be low. Because of put call parity, it doesn't matter if the options traded are calls or puts. Understand because put-call parity posits a risk neutral equality connection between a call, a put and some amount of the underlier. Therefore, being long a delta neutral call issues in the same returns as being long a delta neutral put.

Our Team, will give forecasts and moves, we are planing to do, in our news section now frequency. If you have questions feel free to contact us at any time.

Your HYC Team Administrator

ForexNetClub- there is another update about the contests running, and this time the admin was very creative, giving the example of google. Sure, google started of almost "nothing", but it had very smart people behind it, because if I recall correctly, one of founders built a LEGO printer during his bachelor's degree in engineering. And they also used LEGO to built low-cost cases for storage servers in early days of Google.

Here is the update:

As a smart man once said “The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.” We want to thank all of our members who are in contest for the picture, reviews and videos they've submitted to us!

You may not understand at this moment what is the influence of this contest on your life, but I want to give you an example - "Google Company started with $300". The amount that you will earn from this contest can give you the boost to start your own business and everything you have to do is already to review one of the greatest investment companies in the world market – ForexNetClub Ltd.!

A competition will always end up with a winner who will take all the benefits. Besides the material remuneration you will have the special honor to know that you were the best among the many! Self satisfaction is a great thing towards a real investment! The oil tycoon Rockefeller started by selling newspapers and earning some cents per day but he always had the winning attitude! We are giving the both - the attitude and the money!

Hurry up, there are just 20 days until the finish!!!

Alpha-Money and MNO excessive power

2010-05-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

Some people asked me why did I avoided Alpha-Money, and that's why I have done this article, to help you understanding my reasons.

As a brief summary, Alpha-Money was a program with better than average quality, and in my opinion was almost in the same league of Genius, PanaMoney, TopFinancial,....I am saying almost, because the bigger plans (7% daily) were too high to sustain properly. Sure they had an insane minimum, but there also crazy people in this industry willing to play with big amounts.
But, as part of my strategy, I try to avoid jumping into a new program before knowing market acceptance and its growth. And also helps me to know better the intentions of the admin (if he is promoting too much since beggining, ...) and if the custom script is safe.

1- Market conditions weren't ideal. Like Lea says, this is the low season, but also the Genius left a big scar on this market, and everyone was looking to the "next Genius" (some people say it is TopFinancial, but I think it is already a bit old).
So I was expecting a bigger than normal launch just because of this.

2- I also noticed the admin started promoting Alpha-Money on MNO and bought banners on forum. These were also factors that would help a big launch, and showed a bit that admin was looking for a fast growth, instead of bringing a slow burner to this industry.

3- and finally Alexa shown the huge launch of Alpha-Money:

In order to sustain this launch, the program would have to had a considerable "fast" growth. So the next step would be to keep an eye on it and check if the growth would be "healthy" on next weeks. But....

Probably this happened due to be low season. But if the program had a minor launch, maybe it could have a chance to grow slow and nicely through this bad season.

4- ok, these factors alone were enough for me to dump Alpha-Money. But there is another pattern to add into the bag: MNO interview. I am not the first to notice it, and, a considerable number of programs that are interviewed by MNO fell soon.
Here are my theories:
a) the program is growing below admin expectations, and this interview is an attempt to regain some popularity again;
b) the admin is trying to fill the pockets before closing the shop.

I would say that Alpha-Money case was the first, because the Alexa trend clearly shows a lack of growth, and maybe admin tried to save it (OR seeing it was too damaged to be fixed, he decided to fill the pockets).
Anyway, the main point here is: when you see an interview on MNO, check the Alexa patterns, because probably the program is already heading the south route.

I know that there are people that don't agree with my Alexa theory of growth, mainly on the Launch point, because they say the program has to advertise in order to survive.
So, I decided to bring some "charts" of recent successful programs:

-------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------

So, do you see at least one thing in common between them?
All of them didn't had a "big" launch, and at best a mediocre launch (Infinitiva). And there are other examples, but I decided to chose these because they were this industry leaders (TopFinancial still is...), showing us that: big launch= less longevity/faster collapse.

Alpha-Money failed on this, that coupled with the market conditions, has led to a fast collapse.

Also, I brought 2 programs (TopFinancial and Infinitiva) to show that a program that doesn't advertise on MNO can also be highly successful. Yes, because there are people that says the programs that don't advertise on MNO are ran by amateurs/poor admins that can't afford to pay MNO advertise prices.
And I suspect that Genius and Pana didn't had a big launch because MNO was much smaller when they were reviewed (1 year ago it had 1000 subscribers, compared to almost 2000 now), or market conditions were different from now, with some big programs (Stoic, Woip,...) shadowing these 2 programs that clearly had bigger than average quality.

MNO

Now let's talk about MNO.
Like I already said in my blog, MNO already has too much power on this industry, and I believe this power is being abused by dirt scammers and creating big launches that will diminish the longevity of a program.

-Basically a admin willing to fill his pockets to have a nice holidays or buy Christmas gifts just need to buy good looking design for the site, then buy a nice review on MNO, a nice banner, start a thread on MNO forum and enjoy a quick influx of deposits....then close the shop.
And after a few weeks, repeat the cycle....and a good amount of MNO readers will jump again (I was also one of them during my first steps in this industry lol).
By other words an admin can launch a program over and over again, advertise in MNO to get awesome exposure and kill the hyip prematurely to pocket a good chunk of profits.

-And there is also the question of huge launch problem for admins wanting to run a fair program;

-also abuses from interviews (like I told above). Sometimes it is clear that a program is already falling, and yet decide to ask an interview to get a small boost of deposits before going down.

-Also, some high-ROI programs that buy 2-3 months of banners to look good, and to make people think it will last long...and sometimes we see these programs closing without reason to. Of course this doesn't happen in all cases.

I am just trying to give some hints about "how" to look to overall picture of "hyips industry", and MNO, being the leader ~~blog~~ advertising platform, plays a big slice of the pie called "how this industry works", so we need to be aware of hyips admins dirty strategies.

BaseBucks news

2010-05-25T06:43:00.000-07:00

Ops, I forgot to add BaseBucks news on previous post. Basically the last updates tell us to bookmark BB facebook page for future updates because the main site will face some downtime:

I'll keep you updated... today im finishing up the specification. Once that's done we'll have an idea of exactly what's coming and roughly how long it's all going to take to fall into place.

I wouldn't waste your time promoting Basebucks right now... wait until the new site is fully operational.
And at some point basebucks is going to go offline for a few days / week or two... as i'm going to switch us over to Blocdos and also transfer our domain name to a more permanent location.

So it's probably a good idea to keep up with our facebook page until we relaunch:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Basebucks/329068912645

Scheduled topics for tomorrow

2010-05-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, sorry for my absence last days, but it was a very calm weekend for hyips (at least for those I am a member).

Still I won't publish news today, because I will be with some friends I haven't seen for a long time.
But here are the topics that will be covered tomorrow (if there is anything I am missing just tell in my shout box):

BestEthanol problems with AP

StrictPay

MNO new forum

AlphaMoney fall

Jokes, good news and thoughts

2010-05-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

Well let's start with the today's joke, InvestProxy.
Here is the most recent update:

We wish to inform you that we have recently made a deposit of $32,288 into our AlertPay account. This is to enable offsetting pending AlertPay cashouts.

Please note that since we stopped using AlertPay, payments should be made to you in the form of a refund. So you should be paid.

Others should follow as scheduled.

Have a nice week.

So, are they joking again with us? Seriously, here is an advice to them: pay or shut up!.
And so far I haven't seen any payment from LR, why didn't they loaded LR and paid all pendings?
Also, why was the AP account "cleaned" when they stopped paying?
It doesn't make sense.

I was going to send an email to AP to confirm if this was true or not, but a forum member already did it and here is the answer:

Thank you for contacting AlertPay's Resolutions department.

The message being sent out by the seller regarding a deposit into their AlertPay account is untrue. This seller is no longer supported by AlertPay and their account does not contain sufficient funds to give you a refund.

As we mentioned in our previous message to you, we are still working on recovering the funds. If successful, we will contact you and attempt to provide you with a refund.

Thank you for your understanding.

Now, which one is laying? AP or InvestProxy? Given the track of hyips, and the lack of payments in others processors in InvestProxy case...well I think the answer is clear.

Aballong- I finally got paid my SP payment, meaning their SP account was finally unlocked:

Strictpay opened after the yesterday newsletter our account, all
pending payments in Strictpay are paid Aballong will carry on all
unpaid payments asap. On 15.06.2010 we resume normal business, we
need to generate new arbitrage as this long time closed Strictpay
account and parts closing on Alertpay is not helping any real
business to make profits.

To sum up, I got paid all my SP, STP and AP payments, and it seems I am not alone, by checking on forums.
But...I still have my LR payment pending, and with me there is also a lot of people.
So, don't they have LR funds? Or are paying SP, STP and AP because they can't withdraw funds from these processors?

Well, right now we can only wait till 15 June, to see what happens, but my expectations are low (but I wouldn't mind to be surprised lol).

GNI- finally I heard about a couple of refunds, and one seems to be real.
But, again, at this rate, the refunds will only end in 2020 :)

The good news- BaseBucks- finally I was fully refunded from my investments on it. After all, it seems my "optimism" was right in this case.
Ok, I admit I was a bit worried in the week before the liquidation, but as soon I saw those 2 big refunds, my optimism was back again.
Now that this (bad) chapter is over (all pendings are paid according to last update on forum), Jo already sent an update about the future of BB:

Basebucks has liquidated all of the investments within our systems; 170% Revenue Shares, Cycler and Experimental Funds) - there's thousands of them! Those funds have been sent to your available balance shown in your members area.

Please login to your account and cashout your balance at your earliest convenience. (Do so within the next 4-6weeks to avoid any problems).

WITHDRAWAL NEWS
###############
All alertpay withdrawals have already been cleared.

We have some 60 liberty reserve withdrawals still pending. Those will be paid as soon as our in-exchange via ecardone arrives. Keep an eye on this thread for updates:
http://www.basebucks.net/forum/index.php?topic=2978.msg7113#new

WHAT NEXT?
##########
We are presently rebuilding Basebucks from the ground up. Completely replacing our existing current product range (refocusing our direction towards more risk-free profit-share models rather than risk based enterprises). We're also completely overhauling our website features, services and member tools.

Some features of the new site:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Revised version of our 110% reset-cycler
> Unpaid cycler deposits are transferred to our core profit-share model that pays daily returns until 125%. (Note you cannot join this program directly; you must enter via 'not getting paid 110%' at the cycler)
> Profit-Shareholders (400,000 shares available via the members marketplace) will now receive weekly dividends. The [public] accounting for which is directly correlated with the turnover in our main 110% reset-cycler.

> A whole array of games! An example of the quality: http://www.basebucks.net/games/war

> Our unique take on PTC! Where advertisers will pay you to do view their products. (It will involve a little more than just a click, but not a lot more!) And your earnings will be substantially more than most PTC's due to our unique ability to target based on your BB activity / investments / referrals / gaming history.

> A subscription based private hyip monitor (with hefty referral program!), newsletter and other services to give you the best footing from which to "play hyips"... We're also expanding our review competitions concept - so you'll very easily be able to more than get your subscriptions back with a little participation / sharing of knowledge / opinion.

> Members reward-points scheme... Get points for pretty much everything you do at Basebucks. That you can convert for various gifts, free advertising and whatever else we can come up with!

> A brand new two levels deep referral program.
> Referral 'micro-gifting' will be permitted to allow you to give your referrals a nominal sum of money to serve as proof of concept and get them started.

> Integrated forum with reward scheme
> 24/7 staffed chatroom for support & discussion
> Support ticketing system

> A huge array of new deposit / withdrawal methods.

And I think that's about it!
The new website should also be incredibly smooth, smart and easy to navigate (much easier than the current system!). We're also working on a number of video tutorials / slide-shows to very effectively explain how everything works and some of our key concepts. (Saving you having to read huge blocks of text).

So that's the plan!
It's going to take us at least 8weeks to rebuild Basebucks. But it should very much be worth the wait.

If you have any questions / comments in the mean time, you can contact me via the basebucks forum, on facebook or via yahoo messenger:

FORUM: http://www.basebucks.net/forum/
YAHOO MESSENGER: basebucks
FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Basebucks/329068912645

So as you see, no more Experimental Fund (as many people loved it). I don't see it as a surprise because Jo always said he wanted to remove forex side from the site in a long future. With this premature rebuilt of the site, it was expected to see this change.

About future BB, and mainly if it plans will be attractive or not....well we will have to see! I am sure it won't be as good as experimental fund, but if it is stable and returns good enough then it will have success.

BestEthanol- Mario sent a small update, telling about my review and current news about the program:

Dear Investors,
after weeks of harvesting, I am more online and present for you. I promise also to twit when we made payments, as some complained, I would not do it anymore.
The reason I send this email is a popular blog reviewed bestethnaol and I would like to share it with you.
(link to my blog)
I like to remind everyone we are now online for 5 months and the first harvest was a greater as we imagine. As you might realize the daily interests are variable again, as during harvesting, we did not find the time to calculate the actual profits.
Please note also the quickest responds I can provide is over our ticket system.
We are staring now the presell progress again for the next harvest, and here we have the opportunity to negotiate higher as last year as we do have now a track record in delivering greater as we have promised our business partners.

Regards Mario

Managed-Saving: some people asked me why I do still advise this program (and why it is on 1st position).
It's simple....I want moaaaaar referrals! I practically only have one ref on it, and I want mooore money :D

Ok, I am kidding. I will try to be brief because I covered MS a few times over the last months.
Dan is a man of integrity, he maintained the same plans after all this time (of unpopularity), he doesn't advertise insanely on forums and blogs (actually my blog seems to be the only one that displays its banner, and it expires on October...2009 lol, so it is there for free), he rejected MNO review and monitoring, has even decreased the bonus and is a cost-conscious guy (no fancy servers, but a small VPS, because the program doesn't need more for the current traffic).

Of course I don't know if it is real or not, and only if I was the admin or knew the admin personally I would able to confirm the Arbitrage claims.

Still, treating it like a game, there are no doubts that it is a slow burner, and its growth has been slow, very slow (but it is there), and still has a LOT of room to grow.
Its popularity is so low that there isn't yet an Alexa graph for reach stats. But if we check the traffic stats (also don't have graph), we can see a positive growth over time.

So, unless something happens (Dan decides to pull of or something), then this program should have a long run in front of it, even if we consider it a ponzi.
As always, invest at your own risk, and try to have a balanced portfolio of investments :)

StaunchFinance: good risk/reward ratio?

2010-05-20T05:04:00.000-07:00

Hello folks,
Today I decided to bring an article about this program because it is "different" from the usual we see, and some readers asked me about it in my shout-box.

So what's so special about it? Its plan, because it splits 50% to a short-term plan and 50% to a long-term plan.
From what I read in my shout-box, this isn't a new concept, and was already tried in past.
Honestly I don't remember a program doing this, but I am in this industry for barely 2 years :)

My opinion: it is an interesting concept because it offers a vastly superior risk/reward ratio comparing to traditional low-ROI programs, and at same time should help it to last longer than a regular short-term hyip.
Let's take a better look:

-50% is placed in the short-term plan, that gives you 120% (of those 50%) back, for a total of 60%, of your total deposit, back after 6 days.
-50% is placed in the long-term plan, which gives you 2.5% for 56 calendar (recent change) days, for a total of 70% ROI.

So, in total, you got 130% in 56 calendar days (and in beginning was 56 business days!!!).
Hardly a competitive return for almost 2 months, especially when good low-ROI programs give usually 20% each month. Fortunately for StaunchFinances, there are very few good low-ROI programs currently.

But the main advantage in StaunchFinance is that you get back 67,5% total ROI in just 6 days, diminishing your risk to lose all money on it.
And you will reach 100% ROI in 32 calendar days (60% + 2.5x32/2).

Frankly, 130% in 56 calendar days should be a good setup for a long-term program, but the problem is that admin done a quite big advertising campaign at beginning, being reviewed by MNO, ExtremeSurfs blog, and others. People liked the concept and now the program is growing a bit too fast for a "long-term setup":

So with the current growth rate, it should be hitting the "magical" 10.000 mark in mid of Jun. Like I said in my recent reviews, usually all decent hyips reach he 10.000 rank, and above this level I consider already a risky zone, not only because above this level it will fight with low-ROI hyips to "steal" their customers to be able to grow, but also because it is already near 5.000, that I consider to be the end of hyip market (no more room to grow).

Soooo, right now we have a decent window: we need 32 calendar days to be risk-free and we have ~1month before the growth reaches risky levels.
So anyone willing to play this game should think fast and act soon, because this good spot will be gone in a few days.

Of course that this forecast is not accurate, but only a approximation. Maybe the growth will slow down a bit, considering the final part of actual graph.
And it all depends on the admin, we never know if he is one of those that run away as soon the growth slows down.

Now, about the concept, it is good, but maybe could be "tweaked" to help a longer longevity and be more competitive with low-ROI programs:
-slower growth (a fast growth like Staunch is having is only necessary for high-ROI programs);
-longer short-term plan: instead of 6 days, it could be 10-12 days. This would lower the pressure of cashflow a bit, and still be "short-term" to attract the market.
-the long-term plan could be 64 days, because it would result in a total of 140% ROI (summing the both plans), which would make it more competitive with the low-ROI programs.

But it is good to see different concepts, not just the usual high, med and low ROI programs we see over and over again.
As always, play safe.

Today's news

2010-05-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Aballong- received the following update:

Dear dvdhyip blog,

Martin and I recognize this was a extensive quietness. We confronted countless troubles, as strictpay is still not replying on the notarized papers, alertpay also restrain sections of our money, and Martin perhaps not invest and gain the yields we promised.

Martin and I are not gone.

Martin and I did carry on installing the money, we can access to our bookies.

We will pay everybody the contracted returns, with delays.

We will deactivate the withdrawal possibility until June 15, Martin should regain the returns we promised with the residue of the money we have in our bookies.

All payments will be handled on the 15. June 2010 in Solidtrustpay, Liberty Reserve, Perfect Money or Bank Wires.

Please be understanding if we did not respond to you by email.

Martin and I will focus in turning Aballong back to the program it was formerby the strictpay, globaldigital and alertpay incident.

Regards Alrea

So, it's Aballong dead or not? Or is this a last attempt to squeeze a few more deposits?
I don't know, and I got 3 small payments, one STP and 2 AP. But I still have 1 LR and 1 SP pending.

Looking at their update there are things that makes me think:
-so the AP account is a bit locked? Still they were able to pay some small payouts.
-why paid these small AP and STP payments, but no LR?

Well, let's wait and see what happens 15 June, but I am not holding my breath. Receiving payments from Aballong would be 2nd best thing happening to me now.

The first would be receiving from BaseBucks lol. There are still some payments going on (last thing I understood is that Jo is using the funds coming from the current monitored programs on BB monitor service).
Now all we can do is to wait.

Managed-Saving: I read on ThinkPink site that hyip.com was showing problem status for MS. Well, like ThinkPink, I don't trust too much hyip.com. Sometimes the admin does strange moves.
Well I received my weekly payment yesterday without any kind of delays, and there are no complains on forums, so MS is still on payment status here :)

GNI- these guys sent a nice update, telling that now the refunds will take more than a few days ("...I have decided that all claimants will be paid their due refund within a very few days...", from link, that's why I like to keep all updates in my blog ;) ):

Greetings GNI Family:

Several issues to be discussed. They are as follows:

1. Refund Application Payments

2. Rumiko Rejoins in Refund Push

3. Timeframe / Anticipated Completion Date

4. Relationship / Impact on Other Programs

5. Comments

1. We are pleased to announce that our efforts to begin paying refunds due, owed and payable to GNI members, not in profit, have begun (this Monday, the 17th of May, 2010). For reasons which should be obvious, we will not announce the order, anticipated payment date or running totals. We maintain our commitment to conclude this process as soon as possible and with all members receiving a profit of not less than 1.5%.

2. To both assist and expedite the Refund Process, we have brought back "Rumiko" to the ranks of the gainfully employed. In addition, we will be making some movement of staff as we move in other directions. Not to worry. We will be maintaining the Refund effort; and have dedicated staff who are committed to providing excellent customer service.

3. Some are insisting upon us providing a completion date. This we cannot do. We will make steady headway and work to serve and refund all of our members out of pocket equally and fairly.

4. As we have maintained, the refunds all are receiving should not play into your participation in other programs offered on the net. Specifically, we do not think it wise or fair that commitments are made based on a pre-conceived notion or time-frame of an anticipated refund from GNI.

To summarize, Refunds have now begun and members can report there refunds as they see fit. We will continue to communicate as the situation dictates.

All our best,
Robert and Team

So far I heard of one refund. But I even don't treat it seriously because no details were provided.
Like one member said in ASA forum...at this rate, all refunds should be done in 2020 lol.

Actual state of hyips industry: how things could be improved (and a lot)

2010-05-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, today I will bring a different article, just like the previous articles "actual state of low-roi hyips" part 1 and part 2.

I am bringing this article because I felt it was necessary to tell my thoughts about the recent programs I have seen, mainly the high-ROI games, because I am seeing more and more of these programs scamming before the first cycle, and others ending in a shitty way.

One example of those shitty programs stopping paying before one cycle: SmartMoneyInv
Thanks to whynot, a fellow blogger, I discovered a couple hours ago that this program didn't paid the principal to members that invested in the 10 days plan.
So basically it was a scam from the beggining, because it had a considerable amount of "fuzz" (easily seen from the 14 pages in MMG thread) so the admin can't complain about lack of popularity as the cause of possible collapse.
In fact it had a good launch (check Alexa graph), that was the reason I avoided it, and maybe the admin, after seeing a considerable amount of funds decided to take this money to pay his/her next vacations....what a shame.

But the biggest example of how self-proclaimed "honest" admins are the worst scammers is ChokoMoney.
It stopped paying yesterday because AP suspended his account due to fraudulent deposits. Well it's known that AP as a strict policy about fraudulent money, and checking the link shown in MNO to EMF forum, it seems that this was true.

And what did the admin after seeing this serious problem?
Well, he sent an email about it, but told that the program could survive it, but would need support from members (new deposits).
Then he changed the monitor logos for some static/fake images, to convince everyone that the payments were being done.
And then....at the end of the day, we know from MNO that Choko is gone. Yes, the admin told to MNO, but didn't had the guts to tell to members using a mass email.

But no...it is much better to tell members that everything is fine to keep deposits going on, and then Bam...tell that the program is gone, and the admin is with a smile from one ear to another with his pocket full of money.
And, the site is still online, accepting new deposits...and with fake monitor logos.

I even saw some blogs defending Choko admin, telling that the problem was from AP and not from the admin, because he was a very honest guy...please spare me.

Yes, these programs are very risky due to its nature, but if the admin was such honest, he could end the program in a much better way:
1- remove AP, and everyone that invested with it would need to wait from a refund done by AP itself. Yes there weren't enough funds on AP to fully refund those members, but that's part of the game, and they would be refunded with a % calculated by AP.
And then continue with the rest of PPs and run the program until its end (although it wouldn't last much more due to negativity that would surround it).

2-now this option, is something that every high-ROI program should do, and would be a very big improvement in this industry.
I am talking about closing the shop, and refund every member in loss with the rest of the funds. This would be the right thing to do.
There are some members in forums and bloggers that tell this isn't possible, and that others members should be aware of the risks and tell goodbye to money.

But is this really true??? I mean, it's so hard to refund members with the rest of the money???
My days as programmer are long gone (~5 years ago), but I and my colleagues from programming classes would churn out a simple script in minutes to calculate the possible refunds. Here is my guide (NeverSay and Goldcoders, please take note...):
1-check the members in loss
2-check how much money are they in lost
3-sum up all these losses
4-sum up the total funds in the different e-currencies
optional- input admin cut of profit
5-calculate: total_losses/total_funds_in_processors
6-the above math will give a percentage, and this is the percentage of possible refund
7-those in 100% loss, simply multiply the above % with their deposit amount
8-those partially in profit, calculate the difference between their actual % of payouts and the possible percentage of refund. Then multiply this difference with their deposits, and Bam, we have the amount necessary to give them the same % of refund.
9-use neversay and GoldCoders mass payment feature!

note: I might have forget something on this, or done the wrong maths, but this is basically the backbone to create a code to do it.

Now, do you (and mainly those people that say it's impossible) still believe it's THAT HARD to refund members a portion of their investment, when things go wrong??
If the actual commercial scripts had this feature, the admin would just need a few clicks to do the refunds.
And hey, even with the actual scripts this could be done with a few hours of work (just extract the database to excel and do the maths there, then make the payments with mass payment feature of script).

BUT no......it is so much easier (and better) to admins to simply blame something (AP in this case) and run away with the money than refunding members in loss.

And yes, I know that wouldn't be possible to refund losses in 100%, due to ponzi nature of these games, and money spent in advertising and processor fees.
But I would take any day a possible refund of 10% than losing all the deposit.

In Choko's case, considering its life-span, plan, money spent in advertising and a deserved profit cut to admin, I think it wouldn't be far-fetched to have a possible refund of 40-50%, or something around it. And it would make members more than happy.

I ask again: Why don't high-roi programs do this (and even low-roi, although the refund % could be very low on these, but better than nothing)????
It would make this industry so much better, and programs would last longer because the members would fear less to re-invest, and leading to a much smaller number of hit and runners.
Basically, it would be similar (to a certain degree, of course) with Forex and stocks, that when everyone is buying a currency or a stock, they will increase in value and bring profit to investors. And if the investments (growth) is below the necessary then the members will have a loss, but at least wouldn't lose everything, and could invest on next program.

This industry could be so much better, and has a lot of room to improve....but during my almost two years of experience with hyips I never saw any major improvement, and hyips are still synonym of scam because of no refunds policy (admins greed).

I wish that some admin/program appears and change how do we view hyips and has the guts to improve them, and be an example to others to follow.

Maybe it's just me wishing too much, but hyips could be decent "games"...

edit: I added a poll below the shout-box about this refunding thing. Please place your opinion there, I want to know what my readers think about this :)

update: I have seen some AP hate in some forums, telling that ChokoMoney failure was AP fault. For those: yes, AP caused problems to Choko, but this happened due to its fraudulent/money-laundering policies. There is always this risk with programs using AP, because money-laundering is a serious thing and it's how AP acts in these cases.

Still, for those accusing AP:
-why didn't Choko admin phoned AP to explain the situation? Maybe because the account was created with fake ids and/or bought in underground markets.
-in the end, who will have high probability to be refunded? AP users, because the account is suspended and admin can't run away with this money. And AP will probably refund members at loss with the rest of funds in the account (and I saw some members in MNO shout-box telling they were refunded).
Members using LR, PM and GDP won't see their money back (or even a partial refund).

So...yes, the AP is still my favorite processor.

Today's news

2010-05-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

First, let's start with BestEthanol. I know I said I would review it yesterday, but the admin didn't answered my email yet. And if he doesn't answer I won't do the review, because I like to have some feedback from admin before considering investing seriously. Usually a admin replying quickly is a good sign because it shows his/her commitment and dedication to his/her program, and this will translate into a bigger longevity (the members will be happier with admin energy).

On the other side, a lack of answer shows the opposite, that the admin don't care too much to bring a quality program.
About BestEthanol, I really don't know....back on March, when the admin contacted me for advertising and review he was quite open and fast answering all my questions. So it's strange to not see any reply from him.
Let's see what happens, I was willing to to drop a good amount on BE, but now I will prefer to hold-on and let the money gain roots in my AP account lol.

BaseBucks- finally we are seeing some developments on the site, despite the current situation of BB of going to close for a few time to be rebuilt.
You can see the game here: http://www.basebucks.net/games/war

A few moments ago I received an email from a BB member telling me he wasn't paid yet (~500$). About this we can only wait, I also have 200$ pending. This seems to be due to low funds on LR and AP (at least Jo is saying on forum he is waiting for funds from the exchanger), with just some small payments done each day with the money received from the monitor module.
Overall I am still a bit optimistic, like I said I already saw 1 big AP payment (1100$) and 1 big LR payment (~800$, shown on BB forum), and now we have finally some developments on the site.
But again, I can't guarantee nothing...

High-ROI news

TrueEarn is amazing me. I was thinking that the AP and STP exchange was the "final strike" to prepare the bags to run away, but the program is still here.
But on other side, if we check Alexa rank then it isn't a big surprise, because this program managed to keep a constant growth since it launched, so it fits nicely in my "Alexa theory".

ChokoMoney is another success among high-ROI hyips, and again it seems to have a positive growth on Alexa graph, but it is a bit tricky to analyze.

TeddyBear, it is were I placed my last "bet" on these high-risk programs. Today it seemed to not have a good growth on deposits... I hope the admin start doing some fuzz about it like ChokoMoney admin did (and is doing) because I don't want to call the help of AP in case this program don't last a cycle.
And it is still to early to check Alexa graph for this program.

Remember that I don't support at all the above programs...the risks are simply too big. So, no ref link here at all, just join at your will :), and play extra safe, because the less you invest, the bigger are the probabilities to earn (don't ask me why, but this is a pattern that also happens to me when I do BetFair trading, maybe it's because we make better decisions without the pressure of placing a amount "too big").

Side News

Today I got a nice chat with ForexNetClub admin. He contacted me because of my last "med-term" publication, where I said the FNC site was having some issues with SSL at that time, and he wanted to know what problem it was. Well I honestly don't know what was the problem, but it isn't happening right now.
We then talked a bit about FNC growth (which wasn't good lately) and he was kind of open to introduce improvements on site to increase its popularity like lowering the minimum (50$), which is too big for a good amount of hyip players . I also advised to bring some KYC processors, AP or STP would be really nice, but even if he add only SP, it is already a good addition.

He also requested some advertising and I accepted (you can see the banner on your right side), but I told him that I was expecting to see improvements to increase growth again, especially with the though competition from the high-ROI games I mentioned above.
And finally he asked me to publish the last update from FNC, with some nice competitions (and free money for those wanting to place some effort on it) which is already one step to earn popularity again (now we need to see more steps on right direction):

Extra-way of earning | May-12-2010 01:54:26 PM

We invite users to write and create in their photos, reviews, videos and
designs thrilling experiences and the most emotional and objective-ones
will be selected for the top prizes! Those who will inspire other people
towards the investment into ForexNetClub Ltd. will benefit the most and
they will be in touch even with the management of our company, which will
try to respond carefully to each and every concern that you may have!

Merge your emotions and insert the mix on sensation into your
inspirational testimonials about the awesome program that ForexNetClub
Ltd. is! We will highly appreciate, rate and evaluate your work, by
remunerating your efforts with these prizes! This one of the few programs
that have such an incredible attitude in its relations with the customers,
not only that we can double your money in some weeks but we are even
offering you ways extra-ways of earning! Share with others this incredible
program and benefit out of your allegiance!

1st prize for the best review - $100
2nd prize - $50
3ed prize - $20

1st prize for the best design photo/image for ForexNetClub Ltd. - $150
2nd prize - $75
3ed prize - $30

1st prize for the best VIDEO presentation will be awarded with a $200
2nd prize - $100
3ed prize - $40

Send your photos, reviews and videos at testimonials@forexnetclub.net

The winners will be announced on June 15, 2010.

Lastly, for anyone wanting to invest on FNC I recommend to wait at least until the growth starts increasing again, and be careful, as always :)

Geek news

Wooot! I finally solved this Win7 mystery problem :)
After all, the cause was the CPU and not the graphics card like the dumb dumb windozze was telling...
This happened because I usually "tweak" my cpu voltages to lower temperatures (a lot, 20ºC difference)...I like to have my lap warm, not on fire lol.
But Win7 not only is heavier than WinXP, but I also am using the 64bits version, which puts more pressure on CPU, enough to destabilize it, while on XP it worked perfectly.

The funny part of it that the computer was perfectly stable on heavy load programs and even games, but would crash seeing youtube movies, playing simple flash games and even on sites with flash ads banners.

Veredict Sometimes I have some ideas out of nowhere (I still don't know how I remembered to try this, because it was fully stable on heavy loads), and Windows 7 is as just dumb as WinXP telling the reason of crashes. I had already a similar problem 8years ago with a overheating cpu...and Windows was also telling that the culprit was the graphic card.

Conclusion: finally I have a stable machine to work with...and see youtube movies without fearing blue screens :)

Change of dvdhyip blog business model

2010-05-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

Hello to all :)
This update will be a bit boring for you, because it is more targeted to hyips admins that keep requesting me reviews/interviews/and other things. I was planning to cease all advertising in my blog as soon I would take "care" of BaseBucks monitor module (and I had some nice ideas for it, like placing information about PPs, incentive members to post their strategies,...basically to create a center of knowledge). But BB is in "stand-by" mode now.
So I decided to change things a bit in my blog:

- from now on, the advertising part of blog will be entirely independent of the blog content. This means that if an admin buys a banner space, it doesn't mean I will do a review of it, or even introduce it. In past I would offer a review for those buying a banner (although the review was bad sometimes lol), but this won't exist anymore.

-the advertising part now only has 468x60 (4 spaces) and 120/160x600 (2 spaces). So no more than this number (6 in total) and no more 125x125 banners because I want to keep the blog +/- clean.

-The reviews and interviews (I think I won't do more interviews...too much work to always see the same kind of answers :p ) were, are and will be always free. But the reviews...they can be good or bad. This basically will stay the same.

-The monitor service is on hold for now. The only programs that appear on personal list are all placed there for free, as long I like them and invest on them. This is also the same you have seen in last 5 months, because I only allowed good programs that I liked.
I usually don't have requests for monitoring service, so I think this service won't re-open anytime soon, and if it does, it will be on a different list from my "personal list".

And I think it's everything. The major change is the split of the content and advertising (but I will still be picky, and will continue to reject majority of requests) and the end of monitoring service, at least for now.

Some news

2010-05-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

BaseBucks- today I received my smaller payment. The biggest (~200$) is still pending, but I am still optimistic because there is no reason to make selective payments when nobody is depositing in BB.
And there are at least two big payments done already (1 AP and 1 LR).

About the shares, if you want to get rid of them (after all 8 weeks is a lot of time to have the money sitting there, doing nothing) just try to sell them at 1.98$, because my bunch of shares is at 1.99$.

BestEhanol- there aren't any news, but I am planning to review it tomorrow. But I decided to send an email to admin to check how the program is doing through these difficult times for hyips.

About my current strategy (whynot asked me on shout-box), my main programs are on my monitor list, and are Managed-Saving, HYClub and BestEthanol.
I know this is very few programs, and I should spread it. But I don't see too many programs that makes me "wow" with a good combination of plans and stable growth.
So instead of joining some half-baked hyips, I prefer to have my e-currency sitting on my AP and LR accounts for now (although it is not always safe because of hackers), waiting for good programs.

For now I have been playing (with small amounts) on some short-term hyips. I don't like to promote any of them here because they are risky and I am not looking for ref comissions.
If you want to know which program I joined today, take a look at my shout-box, and remember: play safe, with small amounts (less than 5% of yout "hyips" wealth).

Another joke...

2010-05-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

It seems this week is the "joke-week" lol. We had InvestProxy's joke yesterday, and today we have a joke from......

...HYIFund admin (this program was never introduced in my blog, but I was a member of it). THIS, after scamming members, by building a cycler to attract more money, and then close the shop.
So let's analyse this upda...err..joke:

HYIFund is Back on Track

As you are likely aware, HYIFUND has been going through a number of difficulties over the past few weeks that have had an impact on our operations.
Sure...I heard you stopped paying lol

We are happy to announce that we have now resolved all of the issues and will be able to continue providing the same great investment offerings that we have made available for the past five years.
Last 5 years?? This is still the beggining of your update and you made me laugh already. HYIFund started in July 2009...5 years...sureeee.

Below are the issues that have been addressed:

- We had received tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent Alertpay payments that were subsequently removed from our account. This greatly hindered our operations. As a result, we are no longer accepting Alertpay.
Huh, oh really? I think your AP account was blocked because many members opened disputes with AP, hoping to get some money back from your dead program.
And now you don't accept AP, I wonder why....

- Hundreds of malicious members took advantage of our free investment offering, despite our strict single account rules. We have since discontinued our free investments.
It was your duty to stop these abuses. For example, you could remove this bonus after reaching the popularity you wanted. Now don't blame members...

- We suffered numerous losses in the recent financial crisis as a result of the tumbling Euro and Greek crisis.
I bet this had less impact in your program than the (negative) impact of your cycler, made to scam people.

The outcome of these issues is that all account balances were reset on May 9th. Your account login is still valid. We sincerely apologize for any losses that a select group of our members have incurred, but we assure you that any re-investments will recoup any losses. Nevertheless, the majority of our users were already in profit. Withdrawals are now being completed in under 24 hours as usual.
Are you really expecting to have members back to you?

Overall, we invite you to visit us at HYIFund.com to continue reaping the benefits that we have to offer.
...and to have our wallets ripped of again

Sincerely,
Stephen The scammer :)

InvestProxy joke?

2010-05-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

Today I received the following email:

Dear dvdhyip blog,

A few weeks ago, Mr. David Arthur, the proprietor or InvestProxy.Com was arrested in Dubai for consuming a small amount of alcohol on a beach during his holiday there. He was fined and released on Monday. He was very sorry for his action, and sincerely apologizes, not just to the authorities there, but also to those that may be offended by his action. He is now back to work.

He also wishes to apologize for his absence and for the delays caused. He has now set up plans to revive InvestProxy and to set you making profit again.

His plans include, clearing all pending transactions and embarking on massive promotion of the site again.

Payments have already began. And payments are made, first on the list, first cleared. So please check your account if you have any pending payments. If payment is not immediately in your account, you should expect it soon.

We are most grateful for your patience and understanding.

We wish you a wonderful week.

So...is this a joke? Seriously, what a lame excuse. And why did their AP account got "cleaned" before stopping the payments (I heard that people that opened dispute with AP got an negative answer)?
Maybe he withdrawed all AP money to buy alcohol or something lol.
Next time he could spend his holidays in Portugal, because here we don't have any problem with drinking in public areas :)

But I still don't get the point of this email. Will InvestProxy return? I highly doubt, the damage is done, and the probabilities to return to normal are less than 1%.
So, again, I don't get the reason of this email...it doesn't have phishing links, and the site don't have virus (I just checked it). There isn't new "special" plans or bonus to lure members, just the promise to pay the pending payments (and so far I don't see anything on major forums).

The only thing I noticed different was the removal of "rate us" page, which was cleaned a few minutes after receiving the email. This clearly is the right step to bring InvestProxy to normal.

In the end, why did they sent this email? I can't reach a conclusion, but I would bet this is a bad joke...

I am back, some news and a scam pattern

2010-05-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, sorry for my absence last days, but as I said, I was a bit busy and most of time wasn't able to be online more than 15minutes.
And you know....english is not my main language, so 15minutes is not enough time to write something properly lol.

So let's start with the news:
Aballong- it is officially a scam. It is really a shame...I had some high hopes for this porgram when it was launched, but my expectations gone down quickly after the opening of the 2nd pool and even more with the new plans.
I am not an hyip admin, and never was, but I think the Aballong's admin did a bad decision allowing to "refund" members not happy with the new plans. It was clear that original members (like me) weren't happy and I believe Alrea received lot's of emails requesting refunds.
And....they couldn't do it without killing the program.

This is the kind of program that I hate, not because I lost, but because nobody won with it. I was a member of Aballong since its early days, and my ROI was far, far away from reaching 100%.
I also understand Aballong's admin position when she faced all these emails, but would be much better to distribute the funds to members, after taking the admin fee (although they have not the "best job", they lost time with it, and deserved to be paid for their time).
But greed (and laziness) speaks louder, and it's easier to just run away with the pockets well filled with e-money.

BaseBucks- I was scared when I saw the site offline last friday. Honestly I wasn't optimistic about BB last couple weeks, because Jo:
a)failed to bring shareholders update after the meeting with Carlos (if this happened, of course);
b)before this meeting, he promised a nice update that would make us smile, and so far I haven't seen anything.

And these were the main reasons I placed BB on hold, well before the "liqudation".
So like I was saying, I wasn't happy to see BB offline last Friday, and thought the worst, but I checked the site with http://host-tracker.com/, and noticed the site was still online in some places of the world, so I quickly changed my thoughts, because it was a sign that BB should have really faced some hosting problems.

About the liquidation, I already know one person that was paid 1200$ AP, and in forum there is another big member paid ~800$ LR, so these are definitely good signs that Jo is doing what he promised.
There are also smaller members reporting payments in major forums and BB own forum.
I haven't received my payment, but for now I am optimistic about the liquidation.

About the future of BB, Jo said it on forum that it will face a major rebuild, and the shareholders shares should become the mainstream product of BB (if I read it correctly).

side note: I am not sure about this, but I think current members with shares that want to liquidate them (after all we will be 4-8weeks without any earning from these shares) should place their shares at 1.99$ to be bought by Jo. Again, I am not sure, and I just emailed Jo about this. As soon I get the answer I will post here.

Managed-Saving: the current top spot in my monitor (and investment list), has already managed to maintain its position for a long time, and probably will stay there for the next months, because BaseBucks failed to replace its position.

Many people asked me why I placed/keep MS in first place, mostly because this program is unknown to 90% of hyip players. And the reason? Simple, as I said before, I like the admin because he keep sticking to his original plans (kept the same earnings since the beginning, only accepts selected monitor sites and never did an advertising campaign).
So kuddos to Dan for being a man of integrity, and not fall in the Darkside after seeing his site growing very slowly.

Of course I can't confirm/deny if MS has real investments behind it, because I would only be able to do it if I was the admin lol. But even treating it as a Ponzi, it still has lot of room to grow, and it survived the Genius' crisis (meaning it wasn't piggybacking on it, at least not heavily).
And let's not forget that Dan had as much as 60k on MS LR account, so frankly, he could buy some insane advertising to hype MS like if it was the best thing ever after sliced bread.

I hope he maintains it's integrity and make MS a great program of last generation (late 2008-2009).

And here are the two last updates:

Starting from this month, bonus will be applied only to fresh new LR payments and not on merged investments (balance+deposit)

So it's even less bonuses.
And

If you are receiving again a new activation mail, don't worry, we are importing data on new database for a new design.

Dan already told in January that he wanted to change the script and design. Well, as long he doesn't spend too much money on it...because the current script works quite well, and it is already "mature" with most bugs taken out.

Some other news
Last week I played with 2 short-term programs: ChokoMoney and TrueEarn.
I did it because I was confident, ChokoMoney was growing really nicely on first days, and the admin knew how to keep the hype up.
TrueEarn was already a mature short-term program, on the right spot to invest.

I did some nice profits with both, but I am no longer playing with them. Also, I haven't published anything about this because short-term programs are very tricky, they appear to be ok in one day, and close the shop in the next day.
So I couldn't promote such programs in my blog, especially in current times, where most of short-term programs are so short that don't even last one full cycle.

Also, about TrueEarn, I want to warn that it is on the last legs. Why? Because they started offering e-currency exchange to AP and STP. Basically they are getting ride of these two e-currencies (I wonder why...), and this means they are preparing to close the shop.

Some news

2010-05-06T06:58:00.001-07:00

Last two days were a bit quiet in hyips field.

BaseBucks-the liquidation should happen today. This will be the first time we will see such thing (especially if Jo pay back everything to members).
There is a considerable amount of controversy and some negativity about the future of BB, and although I am a mod on its forum, I prefer to stay neutral (as I always try to be about every program, although sometimes I fail...I am not a machine lol) and wait and see. So the program is still under "on hold" status.

The payments have been processed regularly, and even today I already received another payment.
I advise members to create an inventory of how much they have inside BB, to make sure the liquidation has the correct amount and if there is any mistake you can quickly tell it...and not only noticing something is missing after 1 month.

And here are the latest news from Jo:

Ok, this could well be the last daily return we announce for a while!
I've asked Alex either tonight or tomorrow night to shut down the deposit options on all three of our investment products. And to then figure out how to refund your 170% Revenue Share investments (returning your "remaining strike value" - calculated by comparing how many strikes you selected when investing, with what you have remaining).

Then tomorrow i'll manually liquidate the cycler + experimental funds also.

We'll then update the homepage and i'll likely put a banner at the top of BB stating that we're "under construction" and provide a page or something detailing what we're doing to keep you updated. I'll try and get some sort of temporary fix made on this forum so we can keep communicating while we wait for the complete BB rebuild and remodel to happen in the background.

Then in 4-8weeks we will launch our 100% brand new website, built entirely from scratch, with our new product range, improved definition, direction and with our new set of services. We are bringing a lot of new ideas to the table here and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the professionalism and revitalized business model we're about to unveil!
I'm really hoping to differentiate BB from the HYIP Arena with this rebuild. And you'll likely be able to see that just from the mere fact that we're liquidating everything after such a long time online. I think it's somewhat unprecedented for an investment with nearly 7000 members and 7months of payment history to do what we're about to do. So that should be interesting / something new for you

and

shareholders are somewhat locked in a little yes. But part of this rebuild is designed to revitalize that product. As soon as the new site is online, the profit-shareholders will start receiving weekly dividends (the accounting for which will be very much automated; so as you see more units sold of our primary product - there will be a direct correlation to your profitability).

We're also going to split the shares your holding 4fold. So right now there are 100k shares @ 0.0002% each - but we're going to change that to 400k shares @ 0.00005%. This makes the individual shares more affordable (increasing the market to potentially buy them). And with the weekly dividends (and this product becoming almost a main-stream product, rather than a sideline like now), it should really make it very effective. Initiating a value increase very quickly (in succession with the new weekly/regular dividend payments). So on top of your weekly dividends, the value on the marketplace (for you to resell the shares) should quickly start climbing.

There's an awful lot on its way.. I am still putting together the full specification of what we're about to build - so ideas are all over the place right now. But as soon as I have it nailed down - i'll copy the bulk of it for everyone to see while we're awaiting the rebuild. The new products, website and everything is a much better business model, it's instantly profitable, the profit taking is very rigid and straightforward. It'll be a much better system.

Aballong- I placed it on "problem" status. There are a considerable number of complains about delayed payments on forums.
Let's see what happens next.
In meantime, here is the the last update:

we still not get any answers from Strictpay not even the feedback.
that they received the papers, and they did! So we are a little
behind in investments, into bookies, GDP is somehow back online,
but no exchanger is willing to exchange out, so also here we can't
do arbitration at the moment, this considered, we still have other
Epayment Systems and we still make arbitration with them, and be on
time with payments with all Premium Plans as we promised, we got
also more than 900 emails at the moment so we are behind this, we
work at the emails as fast as we can, please do not send more than
one email as it just delays the email responds from us. All pending
refund requests will be refunded as fast as we can, please do not
submit here more emails, it will not be faster, some people
submitting 10 emails at a time!

I would like to know how they do Arbitrage with the other e-currencies (STP, LR, PM and AP) because I never found a decent bookie accepting any of these e-currencies. STP and AP don't allow gambling (IIRC) and LR and PM...you know...not the most regulated PPs.
I think they shouldn't have allowed the refunds (or better, not even mention them) because it was expected that a lot of members would like to see the money back after the recent changes. And this large withdrawal will hurt severely the program.

edit: I will be quite busy today and tomorrow, and maybe Saturday and Sunday. So don't find strange if I don't publish anything during these days.

HighYieldClub review

2010-05-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

update: this program is no longer paying.

Finally, here is my review of this "low-profile" program.

Long-term hyips have been a mess lately, and right now, for me, a low-ROI hyip aiming to survive must have: small but gradual growth and principal already included on the interest payments.
In past I never liked these programs that include principal on earnings, but seeing actual situation of low-ROI programs, this sounds to be a good feature for longevity. Why? Because the program won't suffer major withdrawals when the plans expires.
But it is also important to give bigger than usual earnings, to keep hyip market interested on it.

HYClub does that! The biweekly earnings seems to be too big to be sustainable, but a better looking at it reveals that it could be a good compromise between profitability (for us) and longevity.

Let's take a look at plans:
-biweekly for 16 weeks:
--20% for deposits ranging from 2500-4999$
--25% for deposits ranging from 5000-15499$
--35% for deposits bigger from 15000$

-daily for 240 calendar days
--1.2% for 5-999$
--1.3% for 1000-2499$
--1.5% bigger than 2500$

And now let's take a better look at plans.
I will take the mainstream plans, 20% biweekly and 1.2% daily, because these are the plans that most can afford to invest.

The 20% plan gives a total return of 160%, 60% pure profit, or by other words, 3.75% pure profit weekly, which should be sustainable.
The 1.2% plan gives a total return of 288%, but remember it last longer. And the pure profit in the end is 188%, or 0,78% daily or 5.5% weekly.

Another number that can help you deciding which plan to choose is the total return of 1.2% daily plan each 14days (biweekly): 16.8%, versus the 20% biweekly plan.
It's 3% difference...choose what fits better your needs :)

Side note 1: HYC had different plans on beggining with lower profits (10-20% biweekly), , but the principal would be returned in the end. I usually don't like changes on plans, but I think the admin made the right decision here.

-it's +1 for plans

Design: honestly it haven't attracted me (but that's a personal opinion lol). The FAQ page shows that daily plan lasts 280 days, which is wrong.
Also, the content is not original, you can see that "investment philosophy" was copied from this site(which is older than HYC).
so it's -1 for design.

Support: the admin replied quickly when I contacted him a week ago. And it offers a nice ticket system based on trellis desk software. But it is a bit annoying because you have to register before sending the ticket.
I am not sure if the live chat works, because it re-directs to the support page.
0 for support.

Scripts and security: it uses Neversay ( +1, because so far it is a secure script) and DDoS protected by HushHosting ( +1 again).

Payment processors: LR, PM, STP and AP. What else do we need? Oh yes, it also accepts Bank Wires.
+1 for PP's

Sustainability and potential longevity:
Ok, like I said above, the plans play a good deal on HYC sustainability and longevity, and they are quite attractive, so I believe the market acceptance will be good.
The only thing that could disturb this sustainability it's the biggest biweekly plan, 35% each 2 weeks. This program brings a total ROI of 280% after 16 weeks, or 180% pure profit, translating into 11.25% pure profit each week.
Yes, it is a bit high for my taste, but this is a plan out of reach of most of hyip players, so it might not hurt the program on long-run.

Another thing I like it's its "low-profile", we practically don't see it advertised insanely in forums and blogs, meaning the admin could keep this "ace" on his hand to play it later.

The growing...another thing I love in this program. Checking Alexa we easily see that this program is still not too much popular, and has plenty of room to grow:

So, as you see, it has a nice potential. But remember that Alexa is just an indicator, and this forecast heavily depends on admin honesty and commitment to his program, and market acceptance.
If the admin keep aiming for a gradual and slow growth, then we might have here a good opportunity, as the forecast looks good and we are already in profit after 3 months.
+2 for sustainability and longevity (good plans + nice Alexa growth).

The final score for HYC will be 4/5. It don't have that "wow" factor at first look, but its plans and slow growth hopefully will help it on long-run, which is, ultimately, the most important factor.

I invested in the 20% biweekly plan, but after doing this review I think I should have invested instead on the daily plan, because the difference it's small and in the daily plan you will be able to cashout at anytime (and not only after two weeks).
Choose the plan that suits better your strategy, and remember, treat it like a game and don't invest more than you should ;)

Med-term playing and some news

2010-05-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to tell that ForexNetClub was also removed from my strategy. It was a good playing, and I got another payment yesterday (and paid in less than 1hour, the fastest payment I received from it).

But now, it is approaching dangerous levels, and April growth was quite bad, which could have hurt it. Also, it is showing a strange problems with the SSL certificate, at least since yesterday, and today it is still giving the same problem. And...I don't like it, because a program of this quality should be free from these problems!
This will give a bad impression on members, and could be a path for hackers.

Final verdict: I won't reinvest on FNC. And currently I don't have programs in my med-term strategy. I have one under my eyes (and already invested on it), but I prefer to wait and see if it can be good for us or not, because it only accepts LR...and with these programs we need to be extra careful.

CherryShares: They finally launched their new plan. And you know what new plans means...At least they didn't have brought a insane plan, but rather a moderate and achievable plan. As I said previously, they need to grow, and if the acceptance of this new plan is fundamental. I advise to stay away from it for at least one month, and then, if growth is positive again we can try it again. Let's wait and see.

BaseBucks: received yesterday's and today's payment without any delays. It's future is still obscure, and that's why I am keeping it on hold status.
Time will tell what happens next. In meantime I think it's better to withdraw as much you can, better to be safe than sorry.
Here it is yesterday's update:

Ok good... Things are coming together now. We have a much clearer idea of the direction we're going to take. Still hashing together all my ideas for the new BB website and product set, and I will try and encapsulate all those into a full specification for our new design & programming team in the next day or two. (This is a $10k+ rebuild in the pipeline; it's absolutely enormous! But if we can pull it off anywhere even close to what im picturing - it'll mean massive things for our future).

Anyway I need to get on with this specification. I'll update you some more with tomorrows result. And we'll start liquidating everything on Thursday I think. I'm still not exactly sure what we have planned for the "in-between" time.. but that's not too important in the grand scheme of things!

update: and we have already today's results, and we have....loss day for both EF and 170% funds :/
I was expecting to cashout more profits lol

Infinitiva: and this giant has fallen. Last generation (2008/2009) long-term programs is coming to an end.
I believe the fall of Infinitiva was accelerated by Genius collapse, because Infinitiva stopped growing as soon Genius faced problems, as I told here in BB forum: http://www.basebucks.net/forum/index.php?topic=2499.msg6250#msg6250

Another side news (not related to hyips):
My fight with Win7 is still alive....I thought the problems was finally solved but it wasn't!!! Arrrgh, I would like to meet main engineers of Microsoft and Nvidia to give them the nice middle-finger for the "nice" job they are doing!
This time I have cut the problem from its origin...uninstalled graphic's card drivers, I loose a big chunk of performance but at least it is stable now :p , and I won't play games so soon (soon the exames start again...), so it don't make a big difference.

This summer I think I will try Linux and "Hackintosh"....

Fight with Windozze 7

2010-05-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

It is the first time this happens to me: I had time to write HYClub review and I was in good mood to do it, but I found out an annoying problem that I have noticed since I am using Win7...it was crashing randomly when seeing site with flash (ads, movies, games).
It happened yesterday in one site with flash ads and another with a game, and I thought it was just an occasional problem.
But a couple hours ago I was seeing some stuff on youtube and the computer was crashing over and over again.

The culprit: graphics card drivers.
A search over the web to find solutions revealed many users with the same problem, and some said it was a problem affecting 4 of 10 nvidia graphics cards users under WinVista/Win7, what a nice thing!

The solution: found after many attempts (2hours of trial and error).

The conclusion: 2 hours of my life wasted with this problem. What amazes me is that this problem persists since WinVista, and neither Microsoft or Nvidia solved this problem.
And this is bad for their business because the most told solutions were:
"return your graphic card and request a new" <-bad for nvidia
"buy a new graphic card" (for users of old graphics cards) <-bad for consumer
"go back to windows XP" <- bad for microsoft

Nice picture we got here...

Time to go sleep because it's 2AM here.

Migration to Windows 7, and some other news

2010-05-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

geek mode

Hello folks, sorry for not publishing nothing yesterday, but my WinXP install caught a virus and it was a mess to "try" to clean it.
Since I am dealing with e-currencies and hyips passes, I decided to move to my fresh Win7 installation to be safer from the virus.
After cleaning the virus using Win7, I tried to launch Windows XP to copy some configurations from some programs (media lists and bookmarks for example) but it was simply dead, no matter what I tried I couldn't boot it. It shows a nice BSOD (blue screen of death) during the boot process.

So whatever I like or not, this was the time to finally move to Win7. Personally I don't understand the hype around it, because it is simply the winVista with a new name and some tweaks, but it is still slower than WinXP (the main reason I always would come back to it after playing with Vista and 7 for some time). For example, my XP installation, bloated as the hell with numerous engineer's programs that my sister used/use, and modified to be "good looking" like Win7, was faster to boot than this fresh Win7 installation.
I wonder why Microsoft is amazed to see people sticking to WinXP lol...it does the same thing as Vista and 7 do, but faster :)

/geek mode

News for today...there aren't too much.

BaseBucks- Jo said we could expect liquidation of current investments on next week. Till then I think it's better to keep withdrawing, not just because of "better to be safe than sorry", but also to not increase the pressure of cashouts if the liquidation occurs:

We'll be liquidating everything the middle of next week (Wed/Thu); for the experimental fund we'll announce a complete loss to switch everyone into the dead fund - then instantly refund everyone 101%. That's just the easiest way to handle it in terms of not requiring any programming. And there's so little money in there (less than $15k) that if we have to cover a few 'really dead' deposits - its no bother as we're already investing a lot of money into this rebuild.

Cycler will be straight forward - just a huge deposit into the assisted one to flush you all out.

And the Revenue Shares is the tricky one - it will require some programmer inputs. But we plan to return the remainder of your investment (your remaining strike value).

Also, Jo asked if members want to have a side site (based on current site), during the rebuild of main site, for members willing to invest during this rebuilding, because it will take around 4-8weeks according to Jo.
So, if you are a member of BB, go there and place your opinion:

Right now i'm preparing a specification for a complete rebuild of Basebucks. We're going to completely overhaul everything - try and change our interface completely to make it absolutely user friendly and really focus upon making BB simple and informative. The only problem is a complete rebuild is going to take 4-8weeks. So im really not sure what's going to happen during the "in-between" time. Whether we liquidate BB and close down for a month or two while we establish ourselves properly. Or whether we liquidate, and come up with some temporary solution using a portion of the existing site while we wait on the rebuild.

I'm not sure... but BB will definitely be something to watch later in the year. We may need a little time to find out feet and get stuff built - but we have a very cool and profitable concept here. Just need to kick it into gear! We have all the tools to do that - it's just a question of how long it takes.

Later today, if I have enough time, I will publish HighYieldClub review. I already invested on it last week, and its growth is nothing short of amazing, not because it is having a massive growth or something but because it has a slow and steady growth, and if it continues this way (and assuming the current gowth is enough to cover its plans) then it can have a good longevity.

But remember, optimal growth isn't everything and sometimes a good program can go down for another reasons, most of times unknown to us, like the recent example of InvestProxy...
So invest wisely.

Other news- I discovered my BetFair bot was giving some bad results (below my expectations), not because it sucks, but because the platform, when using the test mode, gives random results for soccer matches if it isn't able to download the results lol.
I noticed it because I saw a match that ended 1-0, and when the bot settled the result by placing 4-2, resulting in a lost bet.
I could manually check the matches to see if this bot is giving nice results or not...but I a bit lazy, so I adjusted it to make BetTrading, so when it places successful trades final results won't matter because in the end the bets are all "greened up" with a small profit.

Aballong news

2010-04-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

Some people asked me how to change from the daily pool to premium plans. It is simple, just send an email to Alrea asking for it.

But it seems it won't be necessary, because if I understood correctly, everyone in the pool plan will be transfered to monthly plan, and no new deposits into biweekly plan will be allowed.

This is a strange move, not the pool->monthly transference, because many people wanted to change to new plans, but because of closing the biweekly plan.
Placing all this people into monthly plan will surely help the program for now, but in long-term will probably hurt it because the returns are a bit too high.
But, lower returns would make it less attractive, and market acceptance will be important at this point for the future of Aballong.

At least Alrea is giving the option to leave the program for those who don't like this change.
In one hand this is a correct thing to do, but on other hand it might hurt the program at this stage.
Time will tell what happens, and this situation with GDP and SP (Alrea told me about it on last Tuesday) is not helping.

Here is the full update:

Problems:
- GDP is Still Offline.
- Strictpay, Still not even Responded to My Submitted Passport,what was notarized and submitted to them 48 hours ago.
- 85% of all Members Want the Investment Moved to the Premium One Plan.

Solutions:
-GDP and Strictpay can be exchanged to any other Epayment Provider. About this Situation, we need to exchange every single user and Martin and I expect even more emails as we can handle on a day, Martin helps me on Support emails and exchanges of the mentioned Epayment Providers.

Grand Solution:
Since most of our investors are requesting to exchange money to the Premium One Plan, we will change the daily Pool to the Premium One Plan, as an result everyone receives 40% every 30 days for 90 days and after additional 14 days you will receive your principal back.

You can also email us between day 80-90 and continue your principal investment further 90 days.

For everyone who does not like the Solution we are offering, please send us an email and request your account to be canceled and refunded. We are happy to do this for members who are depending on daily interests.

Please understand the Strictpay and GDP problems are out of our hands, but we do have some high amounts in these Epayment Providers, and since we are based on arbitration, there is no way for us to place bets into the daily pool coming from these Epayment Providers, since we don't want you to lose money, we exchange this
two Epayment Providers in other Epayment Providers or to Bank Transfers. As a result, we lose time and receive less payments from our arbitration, this way we are offering now will speed up the problems and is the greatest solution Martin and I can think about.

Aballong also close the deposit option for the Premium Two Plan, so all future investments can only be placed in the Premium One Plan.

We like to offer everyone to get paid with a Standard Bank Wire, this would also be cheaper for us as we do not need to have Epayment Exchangers Rates, as an result we could offer only a 10% charge instead of the 15% withdrawal charge we have in our system.
Please let us know if you want to switch to Bank Wires in the Future. But please note, we do make Bank Transfers lower as US$250, since our Bank also charge for Transfers.

Martin and I hope this Solution is in your interest, as we are based on Real Arbitration, and we need to make Bets to give you the promised interest, as a result this is the Best Solution for all of us, and to continue paying you High Interest, the GDP and Strictpay problems, are just out of our hands and we want to provide everyone with returns and not do what most would do and say we just not pay the GDP or Strictpay investors.

All payment requests were as always paid today, but Strictpay and GDP Epayment Providers are not, please send us an email with your favorite Epayment Provider or Banking Details, and we will pay you as fast as we always do.

Med-term playing

2010-04-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

This week I don't have much to tell.

InvestProxy- is gone, and AlertPay didn't help here, because I heard that the admin was able to move most of AP funds. It seems the admin was clever, and this run away was well planned, because there wasn't any flags showing up (like delayed payments,...), except the end of the sticky thread at DTM forum.
It was bad luck for us, and altough I didn't lost on it, all my profit went with admin.

CherryShares- as I said previously, Alexa graph is not showing a "nice" image of it...it practically hasn't grown last two weeks. I already requested my principal a few minutes ago, and I am not planning to invest again if it maintains the current (lack of) growth.

And last update seems to confirm this lack of growth, because they are planning to introduce a new daily plan to attract new members. Let's if this new plan will help or not, because it will depend on the "market" acceptance of it.
Here is the full update:

Dear Members and Investors,

If a company is profitable, it has to evolve, the new capital must go
into brand new and refreshing updates that will assure the future
profit also. You can`t continue at the same level because the market
we are placed it is highly volatile and attracting customers is one
of the main objectives that all have. We know that `Cherry Shares` is
profitable and we know that it is here to last for years, but our
users may have some doubts regarding this. This is why we increased
in the past the rate and now our clients are receiving far more
money that they did before. All our activity and our efforts are
focused toward`s customer satisfaction and we respond each time there
is a request.

It seems that this moment has come again, but this time, it`s solely
the `fault` of our clients. The clients with sufficient funds and
those with medium amounts of liquidity have contacted us and requested
that we introduce a new plan, one that will grant them the profit
everyday. We totally understand this dividends share idea and together
with our board of directors we have come to the conclusion that this
will be a great step forward for the company.

From 5 May, 2010 we will introduce a new investment plan which will
offer 1.1% daily for every calendar day! The name of this plan is
"Daily". This means that you will receive profits even on
weekends and holidays. You will be able to set automatic
compounding for the first time and to disable it at any time,
because you may want to let the compounding go in order to
generate bigger interests when you will reset it to zero. These
features are unique and we hope you will highly appreciate our effort
that we made for making this plan possible!

We look around us and we are afraid of what we see - scams rise and
fall like tiny soldiers into a huge battle. No more fear, `Cherry
Shares` is not a project that looks only for your fat wallets or
pockets. Even more, we want to be those who fill it! And not only
pockets and wallets, but even your hearts, with joy and security in
tomorrow!

ForexNetclub- like CherryShares, FNC alexa graph is also not looking good: It growth has been declining last 2 weeks.
My actual deposit expires next Monday, and if the Alexa doesn't improves I won't reinvest on it :)