Hi everyone! Hope you’ve all had a good weekend so far. There’s some really tropical winter weather lashing down here today, with almost a typhoon blowing in from the sea. Strong winds tilting over the palm-trees and lashing down with rain day and night. And wouldn’t you know it I had the misfortune to get caught in one of the downpours just minutes away from home. Anyway, a bit of a soaking is ok never hurt as long as you can get out of it soon enough and get home to put your feet up with a nice brew. The newly purchased Christmas tree which was what brought me out in the storm to begin with also put me into a good mood and I already can feel the Christmas spirit at home.

For the HYIP industry Christmas is usually considered an unstable time and rightly so. The large number of investors temporarily leaving the industry after the huge collapses and are afraid that the new HYIPs will not last long. Sometimes it can be justified and I have already discussed it in my ninth issue of MNOFridays which you can read here. But what is your attitude towards the so-called Black December?

So to begin today’s update it’s time to bring down the curtain on the most recent MNO poll that’s been running for the last week. You will remember it was kinda relevant to the time of year and asked the question “what is your investment strategy for ‘Black December‘?”

Some interesting opinions came up, but by and large I can’t say I was overly surprised by what turned up. This isn’t the first time the industry took a few knocks in December as you know, and long term players will have seen this coming since… well, since last January I suppose! No surprise then that the most popular response to the question was:
“I will skip this month completely and will not invest in any HYIPs until the new year.”
A massive 39% of you have said you plan to withdraw from the industry completely for the holiday season and don’t plan on returning until 2011. That also represents an enormous chunk of money taken out of circulation from the HYIP industry, making competition as fierce as ever between the programs struggling to survive. It also indicates the level of trust (or lack of it) that people feel towards HYIPs at this time. It’s true that less money floating around also makes things more difficult for the genuine programs trying to generate some money for members as well as admins, but at the end of the day you always have to take care of yourself first. After all, it’s 100% your money we’re talking about and no one else’s.

In second place we see the answer:
“I will be investing in the programs that have a better chance to survive Christmas and stay in 2011 as I believe I can make more money this way.”
This is the attitude shared by some 30% of MNO readers. It’s a cautious approach but a pragmatic one nevertheless, because if you don’t intend leaving the industry completely you most likely want to have some sort of decent if basic portfolio built up for when things start to settle down a bit in January. There are a couple of decent medium to long term programs that have taken the brave step of opening for business in December. There isn’t really a great deal of money flowing into any of them yet, but nor are they paying all that much either. Early investors here most likely see themselves as getting into something big right at the very beginning. Provided you picked the right ones, many of these new long term HYIPs will see some very substantial growth in Spring 2011, so when better to get involved than at the start.

There was a tie for third place in the poll. So with 14% each we have:
“It’s a dangerous period and I know it so will keep my investments to an affordable minimum.”
And then also with 14% we have:
“I will be investing as usual as I don’t believe December is always bad. There is still a lot of opportunities there.”
Looks like we have an equal split between folks who on one hand still enjoy the game and will carry on playing regardless of the risks but only with small amounts and most likely for amusement (anything else being a bonus), and on the other hand folks who will also continue to play but only with a much more cavalier attitude. It’s a brave approach but one I think puts you very much in the minority. I mean if we were to combine all the votes into just two basic categories of cautious players against the more adventurous ones we can see that careful investors are overall very much in the majority.

And finally with just 3% of the vote comes the readers who insist:
“I will still try to make some money in HYIPs during December because I need some easy money for Christmas.”
No doubt there is still a certain amount of money still to be made. There always is. But if that’s your only motivation perhaps you may have a bit more luck if you thought about trying to make a couple of extra bucks in October and November instead, and just stash it away in the bank until you were ready to spend it. The HYIP industry is a minefield at the best of times, so good luck in trying to navigate your way through it this month!

For the next MNO poll which starts tonight, I want to bring your attention back to the subject raised in our last MNOFridays article – trolls, and the effect they can have on the HYIP industry. Before proceeding you can just refresh your memory by referring back to the article published here. And the question is:

What is your opinion towards online trolling in the HYIP industry?

The possible answers are as follows:
a) A necessary distraction as some newbies really do need to be warned about the dangers here, and at least it helps them learn not to spend too much money in ponzies.
b) They are destroying good opportunities while ignoring the real scams, and not providing any practical help to anyone.
c) They’re entitled to their opinion, there is both good and bad aspects, but they rarely tell me anything I didn’t already know.
d) I rarely find anything useful on internet forums, they’re loaded with dishonest people with hidden agendas, and are best ignored.

Thanks for voting, guys, and as usual your own contributions and opinions are always most welcome.

Moving on to the news for today we should first mention the return of PerfectMoney which was offline for scheduled maintenance time but I guess it took them well over the expected 12 hours to get back. Anyway, we see it happen all the time with LibertyReserve when their site goes down for maintenance as well so I guess there is nothing to worry about. Since PerfectMoney is as popular as LibertyReserve its absence had little impact on the programs monitored on MNO. Some of the admins even decided to contact me and explain the situation why they couldn’t pay the pending payouts to PerfectMoney. For instance, the admin of AllianceAdvantage Jeff contacted me straight away after he spotted PM’s downtime. Here is the email I received from the admin:
“Hello Paul.
I just wanted to let you know that I have been trying to access Perfect Money since early this morning and they have been down for maintenance. As soon as I see they are up and running I will get the 2 withdrawal requests I have in my queue processed. One of the requests is going on 12 hours and I have never had a request come even close to 12 hours before but that is not saying in couldn’t happen, like in instances here. Obviously, there is nothing I can do but I just wanted to let you know as I didn’t know if you used PM as I have never seen you use it before.
Of course, I will process them as soon as I know it is running. I e-mailed the two people regarding the withdrawal as well and am just trying to do a little damage control if possible so it’s just a FYI.
Sorry about the inconvenience.
Thank you Paul and have a good weekend.
Best Regards, Jeff”.
I think the pending payouts to PerfectMoney to a couple of members of AllianceAdvantage (reviewed here) should have been processed by now as the payment processor was working perfectly fine today and I was paid to PM from all the programs listed on MNO that owed me there.

That list would include RevenueBuild (reviewed here) the admin of which paid me what he owed today and prior to that put a notification on his site informing everybody about the issues with PerfectMoney:
“Perfect Money is upgrading their system
Perfect Money is upgrading their systems and hence they are facing a downtime. All Payments related to PerfectMoney will be taken care as soon as they are up running fine. All LibertyReserve payments will be executed on time as usual. Regards, Steve.”
I would like to remind you that the admin of RevenueBuild Steve has been interviewed by MNO already (read that here) where he made some good points about his program which is doing quite well by the way. Considering it’s a short-term program paying returns more akin to longer term ones – 105% after 2 days, 107% after 3 days and 110% after 5 days to LR and PM for four weeks already – it makes it an interesting alternative if you consider to try some proven program with fast but more sustainable returns than the usual high ROI games. I think the slow growth of RevenueBuild during the first month online could be a definite advantage in the coming new year on condition the program manages to survive this December of course.

Please note that the admin of Flamanta (interviewed here) announced on his site yesterday that the instant payouts had been disabled for a couple of days while they are doing some maintenance work on their servers. The admin of Flamanta promises that the payouts will be back to normal on Tuesday but even now they are still processed within a 24 hour timeframe so I see no reason to worry about it. It looks like even after some AlertPay issues a couple of weeks ago Flamanta continues to fascinate the investors who already see it as a leader in long-term programs for 2011. Of course, it’s very hard to predict such things but the optimism of some investors on forums could inspire confidence in others who prefer to sit on the fence during this uncertain period and therefore will help Flamanta successfully survive Black December. I remind you that Flamanta was added to MNO monitoring during its first days online nearly 5 months ago and proved to be a stable performer in the long run having reached #4 on the MNO ranking and paying on the following investment plans: 1.72%-1.78% for 150 business days, 1.84% for 160 business days, 1.92% for 180 business days. More about Flamanta can be read in my detailed review published on MNO here. This is the latest news from Flamanta about that scheduled maintenance which is currently underway:
“Scheduled payment getway maintenance
Dear Flamanta customers, we inform you that from 11.12.2010 to 14.12.2010 we moving our payment gateway dedicated server and payments will not be available.
Due to scheduled payment getway maintenance all payments will be available on Tuesday. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Deposits are conducted as usual.
Thank you for cooperation with us, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact our Support department.”

Here is the list of the programs that paid me today:
RevenueBuild, ProfitEu, TerraProfits, Konstant, PandaTrade, FiboTradePro, YesInvestment, OptimumPride, GainBucks, RealFunds, FutureTrails, MetalicFund, AllianceAdvantage and LrPmBrokers.

By the way, if you like LrPmBrokers I bet you will like another program which I added to my monitoring just a few hours ago. It’s called PrimitiveMoney and just launched today. And I must say that the similarities with LrPmBrokers are quite apparent and it’s even possible that the two programs might be run by the same administration. Look at them by yourself – very similar structure of the website itself with the flashy header, the fancy (and annoying!) music in the background, a licensed GoldCoders script, hosting and DDoS protection by Dragonara on whose dedicated server PrimitiveMoney is running, instant withdrawals to both LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney payment processors which are the only available options if you consider making deposits into PrimitiveMoney. If that’s not enough for you then the plans PrimitiveMoney offers are almost identical to those offered by its counterpart: 4.3%-5.4% for 24 hours, 2.16%-3.4% for 48 hours, 105%-130% after 1 day, 55.25%-70% for 2 days, 127%-260% after 5 days, 285%-1700% after 35 days.

Anyway, as I don’t have any proof that the newly added PrimitiveMoney might be run by the same admin I will be reviewing it on my blog tomorrow based on its own merits, and you can use this information as something that might help you build your investment strategy there. The welcome greeting outlining some important program features was already put on PrimitiveMoney‘s site by its admin and it can be read either in its news section or else below:
“If you want to earn fast, then the project PrimitiveMoney for you. Our team is ready to provide you with services to profit from your investment. We get revenue from the fall or rise of shares, exchange rates, when buying or selling. Can no doubt make a profit, because we have a huge database of information for making educated purchases or sales. Taking part in this project, you are guaranteed will have a steady income. By choosing us, you get
-Instant payments
-Daily-income, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at a rate of 5.4% per hour
-A large number of investment plans
– Receive 130% after 1 day
-Ability to hourly pay
-A high percentage of income 260% after 5 days
-1700% After 35 days
Earn money with PrimitiveMoney”.

That’s it for today, guys! Thanks for reading my blog which you can check every day for the most up to date news from anywhere in the HYIP industry. Don’t forget to vote on my new poll here and also to please support MNO blog in my nomination on eCommerceJournal for their award for the best e-commerce blog of 2010 which you can find here. There’s no actual physical prize handed out, but if you like what I write for you then please vote. And you may find some interesting articles on the wider subject of online business when you get to eCommerceJournal itself. I haven’t always fully agreed with everything I read there but I do enjoy checking it out from time to time for the non-HYIP related articles. See you tomorrow with more news from HYIP industry and another review!