1) If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and,
2) Never invest what you cannot afford to lose.

Below are guidelines for newbie investors who will try to venture the very challenging world of HYIP…a shark infested waters of the HYIP world as one of my forum mate jokingly had said.

Plan Long-Term

Never ever dream or plan to get rich within a very short period of time, get rich quick schemes just don’t work. The good HYIP investment programs will pay consistently and reliably, I will not give any examples, because that is your job to find them out. I recommend being in programs for at least 6 months- 1 year, that way you can make consistent profits, if you try short term HYIPs, you will be stressed out and possibly loose all your funds.

Get Ready to Loose

“Prepare for the worst, hope for the best”. Losses will occur every once in a while. It is a fact of life. If you are prepared, you won’t be caught when you are weak, and it will only serve as a learning curve, a greater vigilance to these things, and serve to make you stronger, you can learn a lot of things from other people, but learning from mistakes I believe is the most effective way. There are many ways to fail, and each loss represents less ways left to learn from.

Don’t Quit!

Winners don’t quit. Read and study all that is available, if this means reading every forum and blog word for word then so be it. Knowledge is power, and if you fail you will learn new ways, make many plans and attack them, find weaknesses in these plans, you will not loose the next time because you can’t. However if you quit then you will never know what would have happened and you may regret that choice.

Diversify Your Investment

This is extremely important, never put all your eggs into one basket. You should invest in as many programs you feel are legal and not a scam. I find this quite difficult and there is only a handful of legit programs out there. I would aim to have around 5 good programs to invest in, if one program was to scam or have major losses, you will still have the other 4, however if you just invested in one, then you’ve lost everything. Try to spread your funds evenly as you can, there is no point in having a small amount in a program and most in one. Place slightly more in programs where you feel more comfortable in, and slightly less in those you’re not completely sure about.

Get back your principal

This is optional, you may get part of you initial amount back as soon as possible or at a certain time, a lot of programs have time lock periods where your initial is locked. I usually let my entire amount compound during the lock period if I trust the program, and withdraw when it is unlocked; this period is about 6-12months usually. I occasionally take out lump sums to add to my reserves without damaging my interest too much. Compounding is EXTREMELY powerful and can turn your money into much larger amounts, strategies can be developed to deal with this, for example, 3 months allow to compound, withdrawal 3 months interest and then allow to compound 3 months, etc.., or withdrawal every other month. You should adjust this to your targets, but don’t get greedy! You will end up learning a valuable lesson when you loose!

Research, Research and more Research

Well it depends how much you are investing, therefore determining how much time you spend tracking them down etc. some things like managed accounts confirm that they cannot scam you, but they can also be amateur traders etc.. I advice you do a domain Whois, call them, pull up records, police and finance. Check if they supply correct info. Check trading history, qualifications, age, sex, profile, and experience, are they telling the truth! Don’t just check them out, check out their family, usually when you can’t find their family, they don’t exist by that name. Track their friends address, get pictures etc. For example I would do all of this if I was to invest a huge amount into GI for example. Keep all sensitive info to yourself, if worst comes to worst you may be able to recover your money, or bring them to justice if they were fraudulent.

Be Very Skeptical

Usually if it’s too good to be true it is, do some research! Any program that pays more than 15% monthly should be dealt with very carefully. Remember there are lots and lots of scammers out there so you need to be very skeptical of any program younger then 6-12 months. Never join any unoriginal scripts and ones who have Ref commissions. Ideally a good program would. pay 5-10% monthly, be private, (invite only), have unique script, not have any referral commission, and not advertise itself heavily, it would also provide proof of trading and names/addresses of principals and be a registered company, (this by itself is meaningless). Contact telephone should work also.

Watch Out for Red Flags

There are many things to look out for, for example, a ponzi wants more and more members, if it seems to make offers and bonuses and referral competitions, then it is surely a ponzi, and a scam. If you believe traders are not trading good, i.e. increasing risk to get them out of a negative result, or not supplying truthful information. Any research that proves any bit of evidence to suggest it is not legal as you thought or links to other organizations known to scam.

Avoid Greed

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception, as Sun Tzu put it best, “The wise general cannot be manipulated”. To avoid being deceived, we need to be continually improving our individual and corporate strengths and weaknesses. The issues to be addressed in this regard include; our emotions — ego, hope, fear, and, greed. I have seen many people defeat themselves, by the weakness in their own mind and I can see their flaws. I cannot tell you how to fix this; I can only tell you that you must. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” You may know the program, but do you know yourself, you lie and trick yourself into believing their lies, you yourself will come up for a perfect explanation to how they make their money if you want to. If you master yourself you will be able to defend from this.