Real World Offline HYIP Investments

Offline, there are thousands of high yield, high risk funds that are 100% legal and legitimate. Most of them are located in the UK, Luxemburg or USA and licensed by the appropriate regulatory body (FSA in the UK, SEC in the USA). They use investment vehicles such as Hedge Funds, Bonds, Stock Trading, Forex, Commodities, Futures and Property to generate the returns.

Returns from these legitimate HYIPs are variable and range from 5% to 120% per annum. These figures are averages and some funds have returned 100% per annum or more for the past 10 years.

These funds have some strict entry requirements, most, if not all of them require you to be offshore and investing from an offshore location. The minimums range from £1,000 upto £1,000,000 (UK Sterling currency is used because a majority of these funds are located in the UK). To set yourself up offshore will cost between $2,500 and $5,000. If this kind of investment interests you, then we highly recommend that you read the publications from Trident Press. They are written by an Australian accountant and investor and are updated periodically. Many of these companies have track records of returning double figure profits for the past 10 years or more.

What kind of returns do these investments produce?

One common reason why newbie investors lose so much money is because they are ignorant to the investment vehicles these programs claim to use.

Lets look at some realistic returns that you can expect from common investment vehicles that HYIP’s claim to use.

Forex

This is by far the most commonly used word in this arena after HYIP, scam and ponzi. Forex is an acronym for Foreign Exchange and it is the trading of one currency for another. For example you can trade the Great British Pound against the United States Dollar. If you have ever gone on holiday abroad and had to exchange your local currency for a foreign currency, then you have indirectly been participating in Forex. Over the past few years, the internet has allowed the every day person to trade on the forex markets.

The rise in retail forex (where the everyday person can invest) and rise in popularity of HYIP’s has an almost direct correlation.

Forex is often touted as the holy grail of HYIP’s, and amazing claims on the returns that this medium can return are littered around HYIPs. This mis-information and a lack of understanding by common investors is a gold mine for HYIP Scammers as they can fabricate fantastic returns based on this little understood investment vehicle.

But here is a key fact that should shock you enough to sit up and listen. In a recent survey by the largest forex site on the internet EASY FOREX WEBSITE it was established that an astonishing 95% of people lost money in forex and the remaining 5% made 95% of the profits. This means that nearly everyone that trades the forex markets lose money and are making astronomical losses.

The actual amount you can make or lose in forex depends on how much risk you want to take. If you want to take a massive risk and use all of your capital in one go, then doubling your money in a day is possible, but the most likely outcome is that you will lose your money.

So to reduce your risk, you reduce the amount of capital you use per trade, and as this risk decreases, so your returns decrease.

A very talented, professional and disciplined Forex trader can return an average of 5-15% a month on a consistent basis. There will be months where they return a negative figure and there will be months where they return sky high figures of 30% or more. But if a trader can average 5-15% returns per month for more than a year, they are either the luckiest or one of the best traders in the world.

The above paragraph is very important to your understanding of online HYIP’s. Read it and remember it! A very good Forex trader can return 5-15% per month. Anything more is fantasy or they are using extreme amounts of risk (beyond trading, and into pure gambling).

Let’s also look at the logistics of a HYIP that is paying 1% daily and claims to be backed up by FOREX. Firstly they have to transfer the e-Gold into their bank account which takes 2-5 days and costs 3%. Then they have to transfer the money from their bank account and into their trading account which takes another 2-5 days and can cost 1%. They then need to trade the money, make a profit, withdraw the funds to their bank account (2-5 days and costing 1%), then transfer the money to their e-gold account (2-5 days and costing 3%). So potentially that’s 4 weeks where the money is not being traded, yet the program will have been paying you 1% daily for that time.

Stock Trading

Stock trading, or day trading is very much like Forex trading, but the markets are not as volatile and there are thousands of stocks to choose from.

Sidebar: A stock is a company that is listed on an stock exchange such as the FTSE or Nasdaq. A share is a portion of that stock. So if you buy a share, you are buying a share in a stock.

Day trading is just as difficult as forex trading. Infact if you make less than 2% on a trade, then after fees it is likely that you will have made a loss or broken even.

If you want to find out more about day trading, check out this site here which offers you the chance to follow the traders signals and earn 2-5% per trading day.

Sports Arbitrage

Sporting Arbitrage is a unique method of gambling that is guaranteed to produce a profit whatever the outcome of the event is. The best example to use here is tennis. There can only be one winner and one loser in a game of tennis.

Imagine Bookie 1 rated Player A above Player B and so gave odds of 1/3 of Player A winning. Bookie 2 rated Player B above Player A so they give odds of ½ on Player B winning.

Now, if you place a bet of $200 on Player A, and bet $300 on Player B, you stand to win $600 which ever player wins. Since you bet a total of $500, you’ve just made a $100 profit (20%). It doesn’t matter who wins the match, you’ve made a guaranteed profit.

Now the above example is an extreme situation which will rarely happen. Most ‘arbs’ will return between 1-5% maximum.

Before you rush off to read more about Sports Arbitrage and think that this could be the answer to all your dreams, consider this: Bookies are there to make money, they certainly don’t like losing money! If a bookie suspects you of using Arbitrage to profit from them, they are likely to close your account.

The next thing you need to consider is that you need quite a large capital to start this method of making money. You need to have a good $500 or more in at least 10 online bookies. Otherwise the percentages that you are making means the returns are insignificant. However, there is also an upper limit to the amount of capital that you can use. Anything above $20,000 and the amount you make relative to your investment size reduces. This is because many bookies will have a maximum amount you can bet on the smaller games where the arbs occur most frequently.

It is highly unlikely that an arb opportunity will come up on a major game such as Superbowl, where you can bet thousands and make a ton of money.

Be wary of HYIP’s that claim to be investing in sports arbitrage. Although the profit is guaranteed, there is a limit to how much capital they need.

If you want to learn more about Sports Arbitrage, then we suggest that you check out Zero Risk Arbitrage which gives you a more indepth guide to arbitrage and even sends you arb signals.

What is a Ponzi?

* A Ponzi is named after the man who invented it, Charles Ponzi. He put an advert in a national paper saying that he could earn people several times what they sent him in a short period of time by trading stamps. People were completely fooled by this and sent him their life savings. Initially he did do a bit of trading, but quickly he started using new spends that were coming in to pay off the older spends. Eventually he was doing no trading whatsoever and purely.

using new spends to pay the old spends. Finally, it all collapsed, Charles Ponzi ran away a millionaire (in the 1920’s that was an awful lot of money) and left thousands of people financially ruined for life. He was later caught and jailed and new laws were introduced to make this ‘Ponzi’ scheme illegal. Since then, Ponzi’s have become illegal in every single country, no exceptions.

You can read all about Charles Ponzi at: Charles Ponzi Website


In the online HYIP arena, many programs that claim to be investing and doing real trades are infact just Ponzi’s, dressed up to look like a HYIP. They might have slick and fancy websites, with detailed information on how they do their trades, but underneath it all, they rely on new spends to pay out the older spends.

There is no official figure for the ratio of actual HYIP’s compared to HYIP’s that are actually ponzi’s. Estimates have put it at around 99% ponzi’s, 1% HYIP. A rule of thumb would be to assume the program is a ponzi and ‘invest’ your money accordingly, or not at all

Here are some tell tale signs of a ponzi (some or all of them apply):

*It offers a very high daily payout, anything above 1% per day or 20% or more a month can safely be assumed to not be a real HYIP with real investments.

*It has a low minimum. Remember in the first section about how I mentioned that real HYIP’s have such high minimums? What is the chance of a program being a HYIP if the minimum investment is just $1?.

*There are no details anywhere on the site explaining how they make their money (just mentioning that they trade in FOREX and various other funds and activities is not an explanation of how they make their money).

*The admin appears to ‘live’ on the forum, answering questions and comments straight away. You might think that this is good thing, but when is he supposed to be doing the trades?.

*If it’s a daily payer that pays on the weekends too. How does the admin generate funds if all the markets are closed?.

*If there is a large referral commission 10% plus (indication that they need people to promote to get new members)

*After 5000 members they still have a referral commission and they are still open to new members.

There’s no way to be certain that a program is a Ponzi or HYIP, some of the guidelines above may be true for some real HYIP’s. After several months in the arena though, you’ll begin to get a feeling for what’s real and what’s not. If you assume everything is a ponzi (no matter how pretty it’s been dressed up), then you should be on the right path.

Having been involved in this arena for such a long time, I’ve heard things and been told things that makes this HYIP arena much more sinister. From gangs of people running hordes of ponzi’s, to competitors paying hackers to hack sites or DDoS them.

The thing with a Ponzi, is that if you get in at the very start of the program, make a few referrals, chances are that you’ll make some money before it closes. Some people find this ethically and morally OK, because they are of the opinion that everyone should do their due diligence before investing, and that these people should understand the risk and accept the consequences.

Other people believe that investing into a program knowing full well that it’s a ponzi and using new members spends (new members who may never have heard of a ponzi before and think they’ve stumbled upon the holy grail of investments) to pay out older spends is not acceptable under any circumstances.

One thing that you should be aware of is that Ponzis pop up all the time, HYIP’s are very rare (some may say mystical).

What are Gold Games?

* Gold games are like miniature ponzi’s. Usually hosted on free servers, they can last anything from a day to several weeks. The difference between these and a Ponzi is that they actually make it known that they are a Ponzi, that they fully rely on new spends to pay the old spends. They’re called "games" but they are infact ponzi’s, so don’t be fooled!

They come in two forms:

ASAP Game: Stands for As Soon As Possible Game. This basically gives you back anything from 105% to 300% of your spend in one lump sum as soon as possible. They last for about a week at the most. The smaller the return, the longer they will last.

Daily payments: Earn anything up to 80% per day for a set number of days. Usually a re-spend is required before you actually go into profit. Depending on how good the admin is, they can last anything up to 4 weeks.

The success of these games depends entirely on the admins experience and how honest they are. There are several admins who periodically run gold games and people who have got to know them know that they can be assured of making money if they get in at the start.

Timing is everything with these games. Knowing when to get in and out will dictate how much money you can make. It is entirely possible to earn a decent income from Gold Games, assuming that you only put money in to honest programs.

However, even if the game is more than a day old, don't enter. Monitor the GOLD GAMES listing sites daily and find your games there.

There have been a couple of ‘games’ in the history of HYIP that have been rather exceptional, and outperformed all expectations. One was called Back On Track – The Game, and paid out differing amounts depending on what day you spent on. Back On Track lasted over 2 years before it finally collapsed, and was considered a small success story of the HYIP ARENA.

Recently there has been a massive decline in the popularity of gold games, largely because players are realizing that there are always losers, and shock horror, it could be them!

BOM Betting

* BOM Betting sites are programs that will take your money, put it into www.betonmarkets.com that allows you to make forex/stocks/indices market bets, and place a bet on the market. They will then post this bet in a public forum, so that you can see whether or not you will win or lose when the time comes.

These are very transparent programs, and probably the closest to an honest HYIP that you are likely to find. They post their bets before it expires (which most programs absolutely do not do), so that they cannot make up their results.

Obviously the performance of these programs varies from program to program, the aim is to find a program that has a 70%+ winning ratio. Once the winning days start to dwindle, it’s time to find another program.

The key to winning with these programs is to constantly monitor the performances from several programs, are some days better than others to invest on? Does the trader have performance cycles? There are lots of things you need to consider, and careful monitoring will ensure that your money is as safe as possible.

If a program does have a 70%+ winning ratio, instead of putting all your money in at once, try and divide it so that you have enough to put in on a daily basis. Thus if there is a losing day, instead of losing all your money, you still have most of it left, ready to play another day.

BOM Betting programs are constantly popping up and closing down. Most are run via Yahoo groups.



Auto Surfers

Autosurfers are quite a new breed of programs, and are essentially a hybrid of traffic surfing programs and HYIP’s. A few years ago, budding webmasters looking to promote their own site on the cheap would signup to traffic surfing programs, and for every page that they viewed, they would earn one page view for their own website.

This idea progressed so that you could earn money from surfing all the sites, and you could earn more money by putting more money in your account. As long as you surfed your required number of pages for the day, then you earned interest on your deposit.

When you are surfing, you must view each page for a set amount of time, usually 20-30 seconds. When these programs first appeared, you would have to keep the surfing window open and manually click to the next page. However soon this became automatic, so you could minimize the window and leave your computer running overnight automatically surfing through all the pages. Hence the term ‘Auto Surfer’ was coined.

Auto Surfers seem to have gained a bit of a reputation for being somehow ‘safer’ than normal HYIP’s. This is infact not true, as most of them are still operating on the same ponzi style formula that most of the HYIP’s operate on. They need new members investing new money in order to pay out the older investors. Some programs admit this upfront, others use the standard forex and various funds and activities story that is becoming tiresome and old.

The reason they are considered to be safer than HYIP’s is because at the moment they are not quite as saturated – there are less autosurfers than HYIPs. With HYIP’s the average investor (one that hasn’t read HYIP101) has thousands of programs to choose from, 99% of which will not make more than a handful of people money. With autosurfers, you have fewer programs to choose from; therefore the amount of money each average autosurfer takes in is greater than the average HYIP. Hence it can last much longer.

However, as with HYIP’s, this state of affairs will not continue, and already there are signs that the industry is getting saturated, this is apparent as higher paying programs are launched in order to attract more investors money.

Cyclers and Doublers

These types programs programs must surely win the award for shortest ever industry lifespan. Cyclers basically take your money, give you some frills (such as advertising in a PPC search engine, banner impressions, advertising), and enter your investment into a linear matrix. A linear matrix is one where everyone who signs up after you goes under you.

The person at the top of the matrix is said to ‘cycle’ once there is enough money to pay him his return. Most of the time the only place this money comes from is the new deposits from members. When the member at the top of the matrix cycles, everyone in the matrix moves up one position.

In the beginning of a new program, if it has had a huge pre-launch and has gained several thousand members before it actually launches, then you can expect people to ‘cycle’ (reach the top of the matrix and cash out) in days or even hours. But as the days go on, then the time to cycle takes weeks and months. Eventually the whole process stalls and the Cycler is said to have stagnated.

The reason that a cycler stagnates is partly mathematics and partly psychological. When people see the cycler flying along, cycling in days or weeks, then they’ll happily throw in as much as they can, confident that they can cycle within a few weeks, often earning 150% or more in that time.

Once the cycle time increases to months, a psychological barrier sets in of "will I get this money back?" As soon as members start thinking this, then spends will decrease and eventually the cycler will stall and stagnate. The members that hesitated about spending will congratulate themselves on shrewd investing by not putting any more money into the cycler, perhaps quite oblivious to the fact that it was people like them that caused the cycler to stall and stagnate in the first place!.

The inherent problem with most cycler programs is that they cycle too quickly in the opening few months. As soon as it starts to slow, then unless there is an external income fueling the cycling process (which there very rarely ever is), then people will stop spending.

Maybe if the program owners created a minimum cycle time instead of a maximum cycle time which they all seem to go for, then cyclers could last a whole lot longer.

However, at the end of the day, cyclers, doublers, whatever you want to call them are simple ponzi’s. They need new money and members to continue to pay off the member at the top of the matrix.

Sure signs that a cycler is going to fail include a slowing of cycle time, the cycle time goes beyond the ‘maximum’ cycle time, the maximum amount you can deposit is increased and people are cycling as normal, but withdrawal requests are taking longer and longer to process.

If you have to put money into cyclers, then the best thing to do is to wait for a program to come along that is doing a massive pre-launch campaign. Once their cycler begins, put as much money in as possible at the very start. Let it cycle 2-3 times. If the cycle time is still less than a week by this stage, risk putting in half your earnings again. Don’t stay with a cycler for more than a month.

There are many large cyclers on the internet, some have lasted for over 2 years, but eventually even these collapse.

Bubble Games

Bubble games are similar to cyclers and doublers, but they are not as big as the aforementioned programs. They have tiny minimums, sometimes $0.01 and smaller maximums, $1.00 or slightly larger.

They work on the exact same principle as the larger cyclers. You buy a position at the bottom, then as more people buy positions and the person in the top position earns their money, your position moves up. When the person at the top has earned their money, it is said that their bubble has burst.

In exchange for buying a position (or bubble), you get to add your banner or link to the site, which will (hopefully) move up as more people join.

Bubble games can be a good way to get a lot of exposure for your program relatively cheaply. The people visiting the bubble site are obviously looking to spend a bit of money, and if you occupy 20 banner positions then they can’t fail to notice your advertising message.

DXInOne

Although not a type of program, the set up and the way this site works is so unique that it fits under no other category of HYIP’s.

This site has had more than it’s fair share of questions on the HYIP101 forum from members asking what it is and is it worth putting money into it. After careful research our answer is a definitive ‘NO’, and we have put the reason for our answer here.

There are basically two ways to earn money in DXInOne. The first is the simplest one, you buy ‘shares’ in different countries and each week these shares increase in price, thus your portfolio value increases. For the past 3 years the portfolio has been increasing at a rate of around 1-3% weekly. However, there are so many fees and payments involved, that the amount you actually get is a lot less.

They claim that the profits from the portfolio are derived from all the fees that the system charges. However, all of the fees are paid in the DXInOne internal e-currency, so there is nothing to stop them creating as many numbers on the screen as they want.

In order to get the money out that you have earned you must complete an Out-Exchange. Now this is the second way you can earn money from the system: complete exchanges for members.

Unlike PayPal and other major e-currencies, you cannot withdraw directly from the system, that is, you can’t ask the company to debit your account and have them send you a bank wire. Instead the company relies on members to complete the exchanges. In essence, the money DXInOne is paying you for the portfolio is being paid for by the member completing the out-exchange for you.

Since more and more people are earning large sums of money in their portfolio, they have to rely on other members having equal amounts of money in other e-currencies such as e-Gold, IntGold and NetPay. The latter e-currencies are much more liquid than DXInOne, in that it’s easier to get the cold hard cash from them.

So with less people actually wanting DXInOne currency, and more people wanting to out-exchange their huge balances, the withdrawal process slows to a snail pace. In some cases it can take weeks to transfer $25, longer if the amount is more. And since DXInOne won’t send you the cash in your balance themselves, you have to rely on someone who wants your DXInOne currency more than a liquid currency like e-gold.

To sum up, DXInOne was once a great money earner, but now, despite a fantastic looking website and a mind boggling money making system, it’s heyday has been and gone. You’d be wise to leave it well alone otherwise you could spend weeks figuring out the system and hundreds of dollars could be wasted.