The biggest mistake of newbie investors is being too greedy - investing a significant amount of money into the first HYIP promising extremely high interest, without a proper investigation of the HYIP. All HYIP investors start by losing some money that way, because they can't perform their own due diligence on a program and they are forced to trust HYIP monitors, listing the latest scams, which are still paying and spammers, sending them their referral links. An unability to check the program by yourself may prevent you from ever starting to earn with HYIPs.

To move to the next step of HYIP understanding and become a successful senior investor, you need to learn some tricks and techniques of getting the real information about HYIPs and their owners.


Time and effort spend on your due diligence process may vary depending on your potential investment and the program itself. But the following tips should always be followed to save time and get the information quicker and to get to the right conclusions.


1.Premade Scripts. After you saw at least a dozen of different HYIPs, you should know that most of them are using several premade scripts available for cheap, such script may cost up to $50.

The first step in your due diligence is to check if the program is using one of these scripts, and if it is, don't expect for a long term run. You can earn with ponzis too, just don't expect for the program to last long, invest your money and withdraw it all as soon as the investment period expired.

2.Whois information. Every domain has an owner, the person who registered it and the information about the owner is publicly available using a whois service. If a HYIP's whois info includes a phone number, you may try to contact the owner to verify the details. Domain Registration Companies also provide a whois protection service - owner's information is substituted by the domain company information. In that case you won't be able to see any information.

Trying to protect your privacy is not a bad thing by itself and serious companies use the whois protection service too, but the worst thing is than you see some info like Jone Doe, +1.00000000000 etc, or just a set of random characters - no serious program owner will do it.

3.About Us information. Always read the "about us" and "faq" pages on the HYIP site, if you see the general information that is presented on most other HYIP sites, there the admin didn't even care to change "yoursite.com" to his site name... Better consider another program. Also try to verify all the details listed there: phone number, postal address, people and company names.

4.HYIP Forums. HYIP Forums are a great source of information, but only if you know how to use them. Most forum members are just trying to promote either their programs or their referral links, but there are also senior members, who try to maintain their good reputation and are usually honest in their posts. Try to learn from these members.

5.Spam. Serious programs always have strict rules regarding spam, they'll never allow their members to send spam. If you receive an unsolicited email promoting any HYIP with referral url at the end, don't join this program, even if it's paying 35% daily, it will be closed before your get any payout. Such programs usually last only few days.

6HYIP monitors. There is only one good thing about HYIP monitors: they can tell if the program is still paying. HYIP monitors list every HYIP program and mark it as non-paying when it stops paying. While payout ratio is useless because it reflects mostly referral comissions, you can find information about new HYIPs as they are opened and consider investing in them after performing your due diligence.

7.E-mail the admin. The easiest way to get info is to ask for it, so just email the admin with some regular question, like "Who are you and where do you live", "Could you give me your phone number to contact", "How are you able to pay so much?", "Why do you think your program will succeed, where others failed?", etc. and have a look at his answers, how professional they are and if they are honest. No admin will ever admit that his program is a ponzi, but try to catch him lying.

8.Pay attention to details. Learn to spot details. For example, most new HYIPs allow members to invest as little as $1, now if they were really trading, the cost of maintaining the account will be much more than that and that's the reason why more professional programs have minimum requirements of at least $50 or more

Good points, hanzahar

A lot of people may poo poo DD (due diligence), and of course it shouldn’t be the only thing you use to gauge the investment viability of a program, but it’s a good foundation to start off with.

I’ve admittedly never been good with it, so maybe the DD wizards in here, like mazzie, who marvels me with her ability to analyze and break it down, can show us newbs specifically where to look for it, how to get it, and how to interpret it.

DD 101

use a tool like www.samspade.org to lookup the whois of the site and it's IP address

keep a track of the ip address of programs that have scammed you and others, and avoid doing future business with the same people

use the search facility here and other hyip forums religously to investigate what others are saying - if it's in the scam section get away from it quick

I think DD is pretty pointless unless you actually visit the operation yourself and see things first hand (or someone else competent, that you trust does it). A smart criminal has the ability to fake all of these things and can give a false sense of security to their members.

I have no problem with admins who wish to protect their identity, but I treat their programs like ponzi's.

I know a lot of people who use domain privacy services. Nothing wrong with that. It's a form of protection in general, it may not be that someone is trying to hide.

Though none of my domains has anything to do with this stuff, I use it. Because you don't know who is out there.

Don't forget people have families and all that and when some whackjob starts saying they're calling this one and that one or going to visit you, do you want them there?

Have a shotgun at my door if you want to visit though

Like I said, if they want to protect their privacy, fine, but don't expect me to believe they are really investing

In this arena, you are guilty until proven innocent

Most don't even know how to invest. Some are thinking putting money in another HYIP is investing....

I think it's about researching various aspects about the program. There are red flags I look for and if they meet at least 2 or 3 of those I'm gone. Then on top of that if the DD is funky, that even increases my suspicion. Every little bit helps, but of course nothing is fullproof, as we all know.