22/10/09. Interview with the admin of ShiftMoney

Hi everybody! Like a certain famous beer commercial, I hope you’ll agree that today’s interview was “worth waiting for!”. I’m talking to Bernard Shippam and his program, definitely one of the most interesting on the net at the moment, is called ShiftMoney.

Slightly later than I had anticipated but given the hectic work schedule of the admin of one of the fastest rising names in the HYIP industry today, I think we can forgive this one. And it’s not one of the fastest growing programs without very good reason. They also have some of the best potential for success anywhere in the industry. They also seem to be recovering very well from their recent problems with AlertPay (keep reading for more info on that) and everything going well, are poised to become one of the top short term programs on the net over the coming weeks. But more than that, I think you’ll find Bernard quite an interesting character with a lot to say and some very unique and insightful opinions about the workings of the online investments industry.

I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I did and remind you that ShiftMoney is a high yield and high risk short term program that offers its members a chance to earn returns of 110% after 5 days, 150% after 15 days, and 200% after 25 days on their investments. If you like what Bernard has to say and think ShiftMoney may be suitable to you, then please refer first to my original review published here for more information.

“1. Hi Bernard, welcome to the pages of Money-News-Online! Can you introduce yourself to the readers? Tell us a bit about your own role in ShiftMoney and also introduce us to the other people working with you. Who are they and what do they do?

I am Bernard Shippam, e-currency exchanger since 2007 and I live in the United States as do a substantial part of this industry’s investors. I’m sure many people that have joined my investment program have already tried my exchange services at least once with one of my sites. I am the administrator of ShiftMoney Inc. and I have a very capable assistant in my parter Felix Gable who with a few other collaborators helped us to create the network we have today and become successful in the business.

Me and Felix work together on this project and we spent months planning and developing it, and that’s the very first difference in ShiftMoney Inc. over other HYIP programs. We are stable money makers with vast experience with e-currencies and who will not be out of income if the HYIP industry ends tomorrow. This HYIP is something to expand our business, but it’s not our only business online.

2. Outside of ShiftMoney, tell us about your past experience in the online HYI industry. Explain to us how you first got involved and how much experience you have, specifically with reference to handling other people’s money.

I personally have some lengthy experience within the HYIP industry because of my exchange business. For two years I have been earning a living from this. Enough to pay my bills, buy my car and my house, all by exchanging e-currencies for people, and several of them HYIP administrators. Daily we handle thousands of dollars from our clients and move this money from banks to the Internet, from Internet to banks, from one e-currency to another e-currency, and all for very affordable fees. It gives me confidence to manage ShiftMoney Inc. funds.

The idea to start this program came about in the last quarter of 2008. At that time we received so many clients. We exchanged huge amounts of money in that season, but the most interesting thing is that our best clients were people involved with HYIPs, and many of them were administrators of programs. I am a person that believes business has no limit. One of my hobbies in fact is expanding my business. That’s what I’m doing right now.

I saw an opportunity for more business in those exchange transactions. It was real proof that the HYIP industry is at least a very interesting one. I wanted to to open an investment service that could offer interest as attractive as those rates from the HYIPs at the time. But I did not want it to be just another ponzi, so I put a lot of time and dedication into this project. I just could not imagine it would take so long to become reality. We spent months thinking of good ways to bring our business to to life. Central to our ideas is making money from the funds invested by members. It’s not easy to create a scheme that really works when you have only short-term compensation plans. But that was our challenge and here we are today with ShiftMoney Inc.

3. What are the investment plans being offered by ShiftMoney at the moment? What are the minimum and maximum amounts to invest? Are payouts automatic or should I request them? What payment processors are you currently dealing with?

For the first 30 days ShiftMoney Inc. is offering 3 compensation plans.

Plan A, 110% after 5 days, 10 USD – 1,000 USD.
Plan B, 150% after 15 days, 50 USD – 5,000 USD.
Plan C, 200% after 25 days, 100 USD – 10,000 USD.

These rates will be available until November 15th, then we will implement new compensation plans. Payouts must be requested manually and will be processed within 48 hours or sooner. You can deposit using SolidTrustPay, LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney, StrictPay and Bank wires. It’s very important to read the rules for depositing via bank wire. They must be for at least $1,000 and only into Plan C.

4. What exactly is the problem with AlertPay? What, if any, explanation have they given you for this? Has it changed your attitude to them or are you really that surprised? Do you think you’ll be dealing with them again, either in this or in future projects?

AlertPay verified our account several months ago. If I remember correctly verification was completed in March of this year. As I said in the first question of this interview ShiftMoney Inc. is a project that was an ongoing development, a work in progress if you like, running for months. We spent some time outlining a good strategy of investment and then the last months working on our company incorporation. We completed the incorporation of ShiftMoney Inc. in the last week of August. The important thing to say now is that AlertPay had all documents necessary and they have approved our business. I really believe they changed their minds when they realized just how much money a company registered offshore could move. The US and Canadian jurisdictions are very strict regarding financial operations. I believe AlertPay did not want their brand connected to a global offshore HYIP company.

I’m not surprised at this action taken by AlertPay. If anything I’m disappointed with myself because I could have avoided this situation. AlertPay is a very hard e-currency to deal with. Me and Felix were attempting to make one of our exchange sites an AlertPay exchanger. In addition to all documents, passport, proof of address, Certificate of Incorporation, AlertPay also made several other demands such as to provide a security bond via Bank wire or Money order. After we received all requirements we gave up on becoming AlertPay exchangers. Their services are very expensive and provide practically no benefit to merchants or exchangers. To be an approved exchanger meant to invest a lot of money with no guarantee of return. We have never exchanged AlertPay funds, but we were in the process of trying to exchange funds handled by this e-currency. It’s now definitely over.

I made an attempt to use AlertPay adding them as a payment method to ShiftMoney Inc., the result was the worst one possible as everybody can now see. I honestly do not intend to do business using this e-currency again and I encourage people that are involved with HYIPs to exchange their funds to other e-currencies before making deposits. I really do not believe that many programs will accept this e-currency in the future unless there is a serious change in AlertPay’s policy regarding the entire HYIP industry.

5. The current plans may change soon, is that correct? Will they just be revised to suit your circumstances of the day or do you have a definite plan to overhaul them completely and launch something entirely new? Why are you doing this at all and will it be a regular event?

Yes, I already have ideas for the new plans. From what I know about typical HYIP players is that they like surprises and changes as long as they are good. The HYIP industry can be a good one because everyday a new business opens. Unfortunately closures follow the same rule. I will not disclose the new rates yet, but I can say they will be as attractive as the current compensation plans. This will not be a regular event though, as I just decided to make a promotional period of 30 days offering the maximum interest we generate in the e-currency market.

6. Why are you charging a flat $0.25c withdrawal fee? I understand your expenses but don’t all the payment processors have different rates? Why charge the same amount regardless of the size of the withdrawal?

This fee was my idea. When you make financial transactions you are subject to taxes. ShiftMoney Inc. has to pay fees of its own on a daily basis to remain in operation and attend to its customers. We pay hosting fees, which was increased due the DDOS threats, we pay e-currency fees and we pay advertising fees. I think is relevant to tax members per withdrawal.

We want that people will make as many withdrawals as possible. It will make ShiftMoney Inc. more popular. But when we place a fixed fee per each withdrawal we are sending a message to our customers that it’s better to make one request of $50 than 10 requests of $5 each. This is a regulatory fee and it’s important for ShiftMoney Inc. We do not intend to make money from withdrawal fees but we intend to regulate the withdrawals. Also remember that we attend to hundreds of clients per day and our time is very precious. If we can get the members to withdraw only when absolutely necessary this fee will have been worthwhile.

7. I can’t think of many programs, least of all short term ones, with a refund policy. How does that work and why did you find it necessary to implement it?

I personally love to buy from Ebay because I use Paypal and it gives me 45 days to dispute my payment if something goes wrong with my transaction. I think customers are the most important “thing” for any business. If you do not have customers you do not have capital, you cannot generate income, you cannot pay interest, you do not have collaborators and you don’t build up your brand.

The refund policy of ShiftMoney Inc. may not be the best you will find on the internet, but that’s relevant to the kind of service we offer. We give 24 hours to our customers consider an investment in the program, during this period the investor can request a refund of his deposit and it will be met. We’re not being good guys with this feature, we are merely offering our customers what is right.

8. Can you explain to us in detail the security of ShiftMoney? What measures have you taken to protect members accounts? Who is your hosting provider and how highly would you rate them as a service provider? Is the site protected from hackers and DDoS attacks? Do you have SSL encryption? Are you on a dedicated server?

I can say our security has had a substantial upgrade since we launched ShiftMoney Inc. Our provider is Staminus Communications, we are hosted on a dedicated server now with SecurePort DDoS Mitigation Technology, the most advance technology for DDOS mitigation in this moment. When our site was DDOS attacked we were not using SecurePort. I contacted Staminus during the hours of downtime and we asked them for a solution. it took a few hours and SecurePort was installed and DDOS attacks are no longer a problem. Today I can say ShiftMoney Inc. is secure and we do not fear DDOS attacks. We have a guarantee from Staminus that our site will not be taken down again.

9. I was quite impressed with the design of the program, especially the flash presentation and the voice instructions. Can you give us any information about that and who did it for you?

The design of ShiftMoney Inc. was inspired in part by some successful sites I see on the web, most of them from the HYIP world. We got a freelancer that helped me and Felix to create what we had visualised. This was more in my mind actually. Felix has helped me a lot in the operational part of ShiftMoney Inc., but the creative part is more my strong point. But Felix is very good in business administration. The designer did a really brilliant job and I believe the results could not have been better.

10. How have you been promoting the program up to now? What kind of advertising strategy are you using to attract new members? How big a part have the existing members played in this? Are you satisfied with that level of support?

ShiftMoney Inc. is advertised everywhere. You can find advertising of our company in E-commerce-Journal, MoneyMakerGroup, TalkGold, MyCashForums and many other sites. Our advertising budget was planned to make a very interesting marketing campaign. I installed Google Analytics in the site to study where our traffic comes from. Over 80% of visitors are referred by sites where we have active advertising campaigns. I’m very satisfied with the level of support of members, although it could always be better of course and I believe it will be. We are working to make ShiftMoney Inc. grow more and more, this will help win the skeptics over to our team.

11. What about the success of ShiftMoney so far? Are you pleased with the level of growth to date? Can you give us any statistics on the amount of members and the total amount deposited? What are your expectations over the coming months?

The total number of registered members can already be seen in the public area of the site. We have now over 600 registered members but when this interview is published this number will probably be a lot more. The number of members is very good and it’s growing consistently. Total amount deposited is now into some tens of thousands of dollars. We had a natural decrease in investments after the AlertPay issue, but in the last 3 days deposits are again on the rise and I have noticed this looks like being the trend for the coming weeks.

I don’t know exactly how the HYIP industry in general will do during the holiday season and all the December celebrations. But the numbers have showed me the potential of ShiftMoney Inc. is huge and I’m sure we will keep growing for the next 5 weeks at least. If during December we have a decrease in business then we will announce some contests, bonus and prizes to stimulate growth and motivate people to keep supporting the program. My idea is to see out 2009 with ShiftMoney Inc. online as the beginning of the new year has always been a good time for HYIPs. Then we would be a distinguished guest at the best moment of the “party” and a prime position for the start of 2010.

12. What level of customer support do you offer members? How can they contact you if they have any issues with their investments? Do you offer e-mail or live-chat support?

Basically we offer e-mail and Live Chat support. Members can contact us in through Live Support from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm EST or send us an e-mail to customer@shiftmoney.net. E-mails will be responded to within 48 hours or less.

I received some requests to add Phone Support because it would increase confidence in the business. I don’t have any plans to do that yet however, as this is a very expensive method of assistance for us and for the members. When I have some spare time I often check on other programs and I see this has long been a practice of deceiving administrators. Internet support via chat is more efficient and cheaper.

13. I notice that you also publish an address in Belize. What would I find there if I was to visit unannounced some day? A real functioning office or just a “virtual” one, eg telephone answering service, mail and message forwarding, etc? If I sent a fax to the published number will you receive it immediately or does a third party have to collect it and forward it to you? What if it contains private and confidential information?

Many people questioned the legitimacy of our Certificate of Incorporation. I think this is an opportunity to talk a little more about it. Why ShiftMoney Inc. is an incorporated company? And why Belize? We are a financial corporation, our niche requires legal registration, a trusted company cannot operate with financial resources if it is not legally registered, and you need to have the status of incorporation to deal with money. That’s one of the very basic fundamentals of this business. We chose Belize because this jurisdiction is very friendly to business. OK, so you could say that many scammers have used Belize to open fake corporations, that much is true but unfortunately there is no way for us to end that situation. And we have nothing to do with these companies. It would not be possible to register ShiftMoney Inc. in the United States, so we have just found a solution that was viable.

You will not find a real functioning office in the address we provide in the site. That’s a virtual office and that address corresponds of the company licensed by the Belize government to handle the incorporation process in that country. To be very honest me and Felix were still working from home up until two months ago. But we are now renting an office room in our city, and since then it has been our business address. I think everyone will understand that we prefer not to disclose our address for privacy reasons. I already had 3 people in the Live Support with the same question so it’s good to say it in public now. We don’t encourage members to send us faxes because we offer Live and E-mail support and all issues can be solved online.

14. A lot of readers are particularly interested in your other business activities. What can you tell us about that? If you deal with e-currencies professionally then why did you run into such problems with AlertPay? Also if your exchange service is an online company then can you provide us with a link so investors can verify this before handing over their money?

I am an individual exchanger of e-currencies since 2007. This was the same year I met Felix and we have since done a lot of business together. Our last major development was to finally rent an office room where we can make our business more efficient with mutual collaboration. We are always growing step-by-step.

Me and Felix realized the whole e-currency market had enormous potential. Back in 2007 we did not have many trusted exchange sites so there were a very wide market for individual exchangers. Today we have our own exchange sites and offer services to thousands of members around the world. You can make money exchanging e-currencies because each transaction has a cost and we charge our clients taxes depending on the direction of the exchange.

Transactions handled online are cheaper and faster than using banks. And this is the real key to ShiftMoney Inc. In our business the investors lend us their money for a certain period during which time we trade that money. For example, let’s imagine an investor called Martin makes a deposit of $100 using LibertyReserve in the Plan A. This plan pays 110% after 5 days. So we have 5 days to make at least 10% profit to pay Martin. What to do? We trade this money with clients of our exchange sites that are looking for LibertyReserve. So let’s suppose somebody needs $90 of LibertyReserve and wants to pay with PerfectMoney. We do this exchange and charge this person a rate of 4%. Deducting all expenses we will have earned something like 2.5% profit in the end of this transaction. If we didn’t have Martin’s money we would need to use banks to purchase LibertyReserve, and this would make the transaction slower and more expensive. We receive dozens of transactions like this everyday. In less than one working day we can earn the profit needed to pay Martin, and we still have four days to profit from until we have to process a payout to Martin.

I described a very optimistic scenario in which demand always absorbs the total invested, but our compensation plans have been calculated to consider periods when demand is less than the amount invested. Our rates are sustainable.

15. As someone with a slightly different view of the online HYI business, what’s your opinion of the industry in general? Would you like to share any of your own experiences either good or bad with the readers? Not as an admin but as an investor or an observer.

I can say that in my opinion (from the point of view of a money exchanger) that the e-currency market indicates the trends within the wider HYIP industry. If you have many exchanges it means HYIPs are having a good season with many successful projects and satisfied investors. I still have in mind the time in 2008 when I processed the most incredible amount of exchanges ever. ShiftMoney Inc. is online today because of that. The trend for 2009 is largely the same.

I’m still not sure if we have had any improvements in the investment conditions for HYIPs but I’m sure mentality of investors has changed dramatically. That’s something you can see in the exchange market as well. In the past people wired money to the Internet and invested this money over longer periods in order to double or triple the value and then wire it back to their bank accounts. Today people make more exchanges but they are worried more about money, no matter the amount. That’s something very good for exchangers.

16. And finally, what can we expect to see in the future from ShiftMoney? How do you plan to further develop your program, to attract more members and to improve your position to become one of the top online investment programs?

That will depend on what happens in December but my idea is to be here in 2010. In my opinion this will be the best time of the “party”. I hope that December is a good month for business but we are prepared for a possible drop in results. We will continue with the marketing campaign that has placed our program at the top and of course we will continue rewarding members that promote ShiftMoney Inc. and help us grow even more.

Right now ShiftMoney Inc. is on the way to becoming a leading force in the HYIP market, but some programs such as GNI will certainly continue at the top. Our intention is to offer a service better and better and therefore increasingly similar to that of programs such as GNI.”

Thanks a lot to Bernard for that. In my own opinion it was one of the better interviews I have seen recently, and he did well here to provide his members with a good source of detailed information about both his investment program and his other activities. My one criticism remains (as it always does!) the lack of a verifiable link to join all of this together. But that by nature remains a central part of any business that operates on a purely “virtual” basis. It’s a risk that you have to be prepared to take if you want to participate in this industry. For what it’s worth ShiftMoney would at least appear to be in the control of somebody who knows the business, knows what they’re talking about, and probably knows how to make money for as many members of their program for as long a time as is feasible.

Nothing lasts forever but as Bernard said in one answer the HYIP industry is in a state of constant flux with opportunities coming and going by the day. This is the best opportunity you are going to see on this day. Taking advantage of them where and when you find them is up to you.

That’s about it for the moment guys, but don’t stray too far. I’m not finished with you just yet! I’ll be back later tonight with the regular news update wit all the latest happenings from the programs featured on my monitoring page. So if you happen to be a member of any of them, or just interested in the business in general, don’t forget to come back a little later and check out money-news-online again. See you then!