Top 10 mistakes to avoid in HYIP investment...
Mistake 1: Spending too much too soon
This is probably the biggest mistake I've made in HYIP land, and the one that taught me the most.
I'd been in HYIPs for around 9 months. Things were going strong, my confidence was growing and one of the programs had just paid out a very nice profit.
In my excitement I invest all of this profit into a single HYIP that I found in the top of one of the rating sites. It's been rated in the top 3 for the last 6 months. Everyone was writing rave reviews about it. It looks and smells like a sure thing, so why waste time making a small spend?
Not even 7 days later and the warnings started to come. By that stage I could see my investment drifting away.
That investment had taken me over 4 months to earn. Within a few hours of receiving it I was able to give it away. That's a pretty good effort eh.
The experience gave me a real good wakeup call. Up to that point I'd been putting large chunks of my investments into individual HYIPs.
That's when I realized what people meant by "test spends"... ahhh. So you spend a little bit, and if they pay you, THEN you spend the rest. What a novel and practical idea.
After gaining more experience with HYIPs I realized that a single test spend isn't enough. Some HYIPs will pay you for small spends, but when it comes to real (larger) spends you won't see a cent of profit.
And you can't rely on rating sites feedback because sometime they get better treatment from HYIP admins!
So now a days I spend a little at a time gradually building my active balance.
Mistake 2: Not testing the withdraw function
Has this ever happened to you: you've invested in an attractive HYIP, your profit is growing day after day, everything is going nicely ... until you decide to withdraw some of your profit.
Either the withdraw function doesn't work at all, or your withdrawal is forever pending.
After I make my initial test spend with any HYIP I do a test withdrawal. I don't invest any more funds until the withdrawal is successful.
Mistake 3: Focusing on individual programs instead of the overall plan
I think everyone (including myself) have their favorite HYIPs. Those HYIPs that pay us regularly and we feel comfortable with.
Maybe their web site color is our favorite color! Or they've worded things in a way that sings for us.
But every time I find myself focusing my spends on one particular HYIP I remember a piece of advice that I once got: "Focus on the overall plan and not on individual HYIPs".
To me this is a fantastic philosophy for managing a HYIP portfolio.
When you think about it, putting our faith in one, two or three individual HYIPs doesn't make any sense given the nature of these businesses.
So taking this philosophy I would much prefer to have 10 programs paying me $100 each to a total of $1000 than having 2 programs paying me $500 each.
It would be even better to have 30 programs paying a little bit each.
Obviously it's a lot harder to find 10-30 solid programs instead of focusing on 2 beloved HYIPs. But to me focusing on the overall picture and building multiple income streams helps me sleep at night.
Mistake 4: Not getting your original spend back quickly
I'm sure you've heard this a number of times before. Always get your seed money back as soon as possible.
Given the fact that most HYIPs tend to fold within 6 months, this does make sense.
Figuring out when to start withdrawing your profit is more of an art than a science.
For example, should I deposit a large amount and start withdrawing straight away? Or deposit a small amount and start withdrawing after one month?
This really depends on how long you think the HYIP is likely to last and how long it takes to get your original spend back.
To date, all HYIPs tend to either slow right down: like one of the original cyclers that has been around for 2 years and now has a 200 day+ cycle time; or they go out of business within 6 months.
Side Note: I believe some HYIPs have good intentions but fail to manage the business side of things correctly so they close shop. I don't believe all HYIPs that disappear are scams.
Given the empirical evidence it's best to plan your strategy based on the worst possible scenario.
A rule of thumb that I've heard thrown about is to withdraw your original investment as soon as possible then from there on keep half the profit and reinvest half.
I believe having a clear monthly plan is key to being successful with HYIPs. At the start of every month I ask myself the following question:
"What If one of my main investments goes under this month... will this be a problem for me?"
Based on the answer I can decide how much I should withdraw, how much I should reinvest and what new HYIPs I should join.
Mistake 5: Getting greedy
Making money with HYIPs isn't really the problem. It's keeping the money in our pocket that becomes difficult.
The temptation to reinvest every single cent to keep our profits growing is so great...
I remember a program that was paying 5% a day for 30 days. Every day I would wake up, check my egold account to find a nice little deposit. A couple of weeks pass and things are looking good, so I reinvested all of my profits. This goes on for about 3 months. By this stage I've grown my investment with this program by reinvesting all the profit. Now I can sit back and reap the rewards.
Unfortunately (you guessed it) the program stopped paying.
Obviously I got a bit greedy and wanted to multiply my profit quickly. As mentioned before a better approach might have been to reinvest half of the profit and take the rest to invest elsewhere.
Mistake 6: Doing what everyone else is doing
It's very interesting to watch some of the rating sites and how their Top Rated programs seem to fall one after the other. Maybe it's because all HYIPs have a limited life-span? or is it because of all the rumours that start floating around once a HYIP gets in the spotlight? Or maybe, too much money coming in is too hard to resist!
I've learnt to mix my program selection with some well known HYIPs and some more obscure (yet established) programs.
My ideal HYIP is one that isn't in the spotlight but has been paying successfully for a while (4 months or more).
Mistake 7: Saving up for one big withdrawal
Some HYIPs seem to struggle when making large payouts. I recall a HYIP that became very popular all of a sudden after being rated high on one of the rating sites. Within 3 weeks a number of large investors had started requesting withdrawals. It quickly became apparent that the admins didn't have the funds available to make the payments.
It's possible that they were scammers who weren't really investing the funds, but it's all possible that they'd invested all the funds and didn't have enough liquid funds to honor the withdrawal requests. Either way rumors flew and things spiraled badly. They were out of business within a couple of weeks.
I find that making small, regular withdrawals is often better for everyone.
Mistake 8: Investing without doing any research
If you're like me, the last thing you want to do when you find a promising HYIP is to do a whole heap of research. I'm usually hitting the spend button before you could say "google"!
But then came that time when I made a deposit only to find out 10 minutes later on one of the hyip discussion sites that they haven't been paying for the last 5 days. Oops!
I mean, seriously, how can these programs stay online even after they've been proven not to be paying! Someone must have forgotten to press the off button on many of these hyip scripts.
So here are a couple of HYIP blacklists to check against before making a new spend:
http://www.hyip-navigator.com/black.php
http://www.stochasticsoccer.com/kakarukeys
It's even better to do a quick search on some of the big hyip forums or even Google.
A few minutes research can make a big difference to the end profit.
Mistake 9: Investing big at the end of the year
Let me take you back to the end of 2004 ... A hand full of solid HYIPs started to come out on top. More and more people invested big into these "safe, established, sure things". Including yours truly.
Things were looking good.
It wasn't until mid December that things started to fall apart, in a big way. One after one these established HYIPs started falling.
It's true that online marketing hits rock bottom around Christmas time. People don't have as much money to throw around. In fact, many people probably start withdrawing their HYIP profits around this time leading to a mini-HYIP-recession as it seems.
This is an established trend that seems to appear online year after year. I know I won't be making any big investments coming into December.
Mistake 10: Not tracking your returns clearly
Six months into HYIPs I realized that I was tracking the wrong things!
I was keeping track of all my individual deposits and withdrawals, which is great. But I didn't have an overall picture of how my portfolio was performing.
I wasn't able to say exactly how much I'd put in, what my portfolio is worth, my overall returns to date and my project returns for the coming month.
After experimenting with a few different Excel spreadsheet designs I realized that for me the key is to keep my tracking sheet very simple so I can see the big picture.
Here are some of the main things that I track for each HYIP:
- Name
- Web Site Address
- Investment (amount invested from egold, etc)
- Worth (what's the current investment worth in this HYIP)
- Earnings (how much I've withdrawn from this HYIP into my own egold account, etc)
- Earning vs Investment ratio (what's my profit/loss)
- Projected profit for next month
- Any comments, interest rate, concerns, etc.
This way I can list all the HYIPs on a single page with a total at the bottom.
By focusing on these high level numbers as opposed to the individual deposits/withdrawals I'm able to see the big picture, where I'm over exposed, where I'm having success and a lot more.
Putting together a suitable spreadsheet makes the daily task of tracking your HYIPs a pleasure.
Summary
So here is a summary of my top mistakes:
Mistake 1: Spending too much too soon
Mistake 2: Not testing the withdraw function
Mistake 3: Focusing on individual programs instead of the overall plan
Mistake 4: Not getting your original spend back quickly
Mistake 5: Getting greedy
Mistake 6: Doing what everyone else is doing
Mistake 7: Saving up for one big withdrawal
Mistake 8: Investing without doing
Mistake 9: Investing big at the end of the year
Mistake 10: Not tracking your returns clearly
At the end of the day, making money with HYIPs is as much an art as it is a science. By setting and following your own rules you can dramatically reduce your risk of losing money and hopefully significantly tip the balance in your favor to make some serious returns.
Happy HYIPing!
