Mistake 6: Doing what everyone else is doingIt'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 withdrawalSome 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 researchIf 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.phphttp://www.stochasticsoccer.com/kakarukeysIt'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 yearLet 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 clearlySix 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.