Hi, guys! It seems today was a bad day for those using LibertyReserve as their payment processor of choice including me. There were approximately 12 hours of downtime. It all started with some scheduled maintenance that was announced earlier so everybody was calm and peaceful for a while. But then 4 hours, 6… 8 hours passed and nothing. People began to worry as we all know that short-term HYIPs like FastProfitPro and DesiresHYIP strongly depend on the incoming funds to pay to the older members. I know that they have other processors to pay to (STP for FastProfitPro and AP for DesiresHYIP) but I still think that the majority of funds are still coming from LibertyReserve as the most popular payment processor for HYIPs. So the more LR was offline the more damage it might cause to these programs. I must say that their survival was up to how much time LibertyReserve was about to be offline. There were many speculations on forums of what it might be either DDOS-attack or some attack from competitors including V-Money. Some of the members even suspected that LR was gone for good. Unfortunately there were similar cases in the past. And depositing by LR one cannot be sure of how reliable this payment processor can be. However the same applies to e-gold, e-bullion, STP and other processors. Today’s events made me think of how unstable HYIP industry can be if it relies only on one payment processor which is certainly lacking in communication sometimes. So once more I repeat that you should only invest the money you can afford to lose even if it’s an HYIP run by some experienced and trusted person. And “high yield” is not a key phrase here. “High risk” would be more correct.

As you can see LibertyReserve is back online now. So I hope everything will be back on track with the programs I mentioned. All the payments to LibertyReserve were delayed in both of the hottest HYIPs: DesiresHYIP and FastProfitPro. Of course no deposits could be made either. This outage in LibertyReserve could affect these programs’ performance in a bad way so I think the admins should think about some way to avoid this in the future.

Other news for today.

Actually, there was one chance to withdraw your money to STP if you’re a member of FastProfitPro and Dave just posted about it on MMG: “For those of you who want to get paid faster, you can use the LR cash balance to STP cash balance option and withdraw via STP. I am caught up with all payments via STP already and will continue to do so. If you want to add your STP account then you can send me a ticket TOGETHER with your secret word“. I think there’s some clarification about this “secret word” needed and Dave mentioned about it in his recent update: “This will be short. If you noticed, we have a new security feature implemented on the site. The first time you log-in after we installed that, it will ask for your birthdate and a security word that YOU HAVE TO CREATE yourselves. The system will ask you this just one time. This will be used in case you need something changed on your account like payment processor details. I will ask you the questions and you have to reply correctly or else, I will not honor your request. So it is imperative that you answer this truthfully so no one can change anything in your account without your knowledge“. I can only add here that I got paid already to my LR account very fast after LR came back online.

I was paid from GreenLinkAds last night and re-upgraded today. Also I purchased more adpacks in AttractiveAds and PSTraffic. And by the way, the PSTraffic purchase went smooth as the STP issue was finally fixed. Here’s the last update from Jamie himself regarding this: “STP (Stella) has fixed the upgrade issue and STP purchases are now being credited to member’s accounts properly. Thanks to all STP users for being patient.”

There’s another rather strange update that was published recently regarding SurfMargin. It seems that Charles spoke about everything but cashouts, that are still far behind schedule and my recommendation for now is “wait and see”. Not that I have doubts in Charles because he overcame many difficulties in the past and I’m sure will do it in the future too but it’s always better be safe than sorry. As for me, I’m still an active member with minimum upgrades in both programs run by Charles and I will support him till the end. Anyway, here’s the update that is rather long in my opinion:

“As a much valued member of SurfMargin, we are contacting you to thank you for your continued patience in awaiting your cashout for your current pending amount. Please be aware that every effort is being made to pay out the total amount currently due to you. Our prior email communications have made the membership aware of the seasonal challenges we encountered which also had been compounded by the SolidTrustPay issues that are now resolved. We are confident that now the holiday season is over, we will again see a return to normal activity and anticipate a prosperous new year for SurfMargin as we implement some exciting new plans that will go a long way to make the company even stronger and will help avoid this situation in the future.

FYI, some of the planned changes for 2008 will include the addition of new staff, improved customer service response and new multiple income stream opportunities for the benefit of both membership and our business which will help to avoid seasonal bottlenecks like the one we have just experienced. Plans are already underway to generate more income by selling mainstream commercial advertising to merchants, by introducing innovative video-voice ad technology to our site and offering members a webpage if needed for their business for a reasonable fee. A link to the SurfMargin store will soon be available with more detail about these new opportunities.

In addition, the SurfMargin marketing department will be working diligently on the expansion of our membership base by exploring networking opportunities with other successful online organizations making it possible for your advertising sites to be viewed by thousands of new viewers in the near future. Soon, we will also be providing promotional materials and are preparing specialized training for members who are interested in sharing the SurfMargin opportunity with others and will earn a lucrative commission while doing so.

These are not the plans of a short sighted, short term business. You will find many changes in 2008 but we assure you that all changes will be to strengthen our relationship with those that matter to us the most, you, our customer and member. We have been through difficult times before and have kept our word and become stronger for it. We ask you to recognize our honesty and our determination to succeed in this very volatile market by allowing us a little more patience until thing are normal once again“.

And here’s the latest update from Jeff, admin of QXLsurf: “Another busy day, have already generate the payout list, credit any missed earnings, and processed payouts. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! If you’ve been paid, take a few minutes to vote/post and let others know. Believe me, every vote is important. Yes, I realize it can be difficult for some, especially if you surf a few sites and are on a dial-up connection“. By the way, my last interview with Jeff was a great success and attracted many visitors to my site. I’m going to keep it that way and you can expect to get more quality interviews and reviews on my blog very soon. So stay tuned, and if you haven’t done it yet please take the time to subscribe to my RSS feed. It will only take a minute but will let you be updated on the most interesting info regarding the world of HYIP and autosurfing. See you tomorrow when I’m going to post a review of one interesting program I came across recently!