05/06/2015. MNOFridays (19th issue) and Daily News from the HYIP Industry

Hello everyone! Welcome again to the MNO blog. Despite some recent improvements, the HYIP industry is not in particularly good shape at the moment. Not compared to this time in previous years anyway. A lot of fast scams are being reported all over HYIP related forums/media, etc right now, though at least I’m pleased to see that it doesn’t apply to MNO so much. All the programs here are still paying well, but while things are quiet I believe it’s high time to revive the “MNO Fridays” articles, a series that ran from 2010 to 2012 focusing on some of the more controversial aspects of the online HYIP industry. At the time time was really a buzz about them, with a lot of very positive feedback from readers as they proved such an eye-opener for many of you (especially less experienced investors who said they found them very educational) back then. Eighteen issues were published occasionally over the course of two years or so, and I’ve now decided not just to continue with them but also to revise, edit, and re-write the older articles to make them more relevant and up-to-date for the industry as it stands today. These will all be posted together under a single tab on the MNO website, so please keep an eye open for that at a later time as it will be announced on my blog when they are ready. I believe that my personal experience gained over the many years I’ve been running MNO, and prior to that many years spent as a regular investor, can provide both some very good lessons for newbies and some interesting revelations to more experienced players.

The subject of today’s article then is blogs and other HYIP related media, or more specifically the role they sometimes play in collaboration with the various crooks and scam artists that are trying to steal your money. It got me thinking back to the very first posts I made on MNO all those years ago and the reasons why I started MNO in the first place. Ten years ago I was just a regular HYIP investor, not a monitor, looking to supplement my salary and make a couple of easy bucks on the side to top up my regular daytime, nine-to-five, Monday to Friday job at the time. Pretty much the same story as most of you guys reading my blog today, right? Well, back in those days there was a huge variety of HYIP related blogs, all reflecting massive differences of opinion, experiences, and various outlooks on the industry. Actually a lot of them were quite good, not like today, and it was more about just regular guys sharing personal thoughts and opinions much more than just being motivated by profit or being paid-off to write more favorable articles about certain programs, despite being obvious scams. But like most people, back then I was very much dependent on the information I received from monitors to decide where to invest my money. Needless to say, not much has changed over the years and I received a lot of very bad advice! So it then occurred to me, this is my money we’re talking about, and I’m the only one who profits or looses from my own investments. So why on earth am I paying attention to so-called “monitors” who are clearly being paid/bribed to lie to me? It was a bad idea all round, so if it’s money out my pocket being invested then why aren’t I the one monitoring it? I mean it can’t be that difficult if you have some rudimentary computer skills, and the only requirement to running an honest monitor is the ability to answer one simple yes-or-no question – is a program paying or not? It sounds so easy, yet so many blogs/monitors seem utterly incapable of doing so. And that my dear friends is the simple reason behind the launch of MNO. A lot of the honest and genuine bloggers who I liked so much decided (largely for personal reasons) that they didn’t want to continue with their websites anymore, so I saw a void and decided to fill it. Years later I think a lot of the blogs that followed have tried (and failed) to blatantly copy or emulate MNO, but back then all those old blogger tried to do something fresh and original. It worked out well for me, it didn’t work out so well for them, but there you go. You need to give your readers what they want to hear, but for what it’s worth I do miss some of the better ones. Competition was good, and some of them, especially the American blogs had some interesting and insightful articles that always threw up some some excellent debates that ran for weeks.

Things have changed on that front, and regrettably they haven’t changed for the better. With so many fast scams in the industry now the once commendable act of blogging about your personal experiences purely for the sake of helping and sharing and discussion with other people just like you around the world is sadly in decline. I’m not saying everyone else is wrong except MNO, there’s still a few good ones around even if they’re not all that popular, but just too many of the ones that have gotten big in recent times have been run by the despicable, the dishonest, and the downright dangerous. Seems ambition is more a criteria for success these days than sincerity. This group are perhaps the most damaging, because what they are trying to do is establish a support and promotional network for the scams they themselves are organizing.

The other group are just the greedy, people who saw an opportunity to grant themselves some kind of authority purely by virtue of the fact they have a blog, and then use this as a mask to promote all sorts cheap and fast scams. It doesn’t matter how obviously low-grade the program they promote is, all they need to do is get paid a couple of dollars for supporting it and if the readers all lose money, well, tough luck, that’s your problem not the bloggers.

The first of these that I was aware of was run quite openly by one particularly ruthless HYIP admin who would stop at nothing to steal as much cash as possible, ruining as many lives in the process (he certainly didn’t care). Longer term readers might remember the odious name Lea Gao, an assumed identity naturally, but that was the admin’s chosen moniker. Initially this person was an online HYIP admin. Then, under the same identity, expanded the HYIP into a blog, monitor, and discussion forum all intended to create support for the HYIP. Then, he started his own scam payment processor. The entire “empire” here of course hinged on one very volatile foundation – the admin’s original HYIP. Once the HYIP ran its course and collapsed, the credibility of every other associated website was instantly wiped out. A series of other cheap scam HYIPs was established by the same admin under a different name, all aimed not so much as getting people to join, but to advance the name of his payment processor. So when the whole house of cards came tumbling down, not only did he steal the principal you had invested in his HYIPs, he stole back everything he had already paid in interest payments via his scam payment processor. But what I found most unbelievable about the whole thing was how utterly devoted the victims were to the scam even after it was obvious the money was all gone and the admin not coming back. I mean anyone can operate a blog, a monitor, a forum, etc, but to build it all on top of a HYIP means even a child can see the whole thing simply has to collapse at some point. The worst thing about all of this was that it left many investors broken and feeling like they can’t trust anyone ever again. I can understand their feelings but they simply cannot say that they were not warned about it. Remember we are all here to learn from past experiences (I myself am doing so all the time) and only by getting some important lessons from your mistakes can you improve yourself and achieve your goals.

That was five years ago, and now history seems to be repeating itself. A whole new generation of HYIP investors are again falling under the spell of a woman that’s become unflatteringly known as “the one-eyed scarecrow” among Russian speaking investors. I’m a lot more positive about the fact that more investors are waking up to the danger posed by this individual and her small band of collaborators a lot faster this time than in the past, though it still baffles me how so many could sleepwalk into the situation to begin with. This particular blog targets mostly a Russian audience, though there’s a small partnership operating in English on behalf of the collective on HYIP forums, chat rooms, the shout-boxes of other blogs (not MNO, they’ve all been thrown out and banned), etc. The Modus Operandi is more or less the same as that set by Lea Gao as described above, the real difference is that in this case the admin has seen the importance of avoiding a direct link between the cheap scams he is running and the support/promotion network he has set up to encourage his victims to spend more and more money they can scarcely afford.

The public face of this particular blog is a woman, though I suspect that has also been carefully contrived. Not trying to sound like a sexist or some kind of chauvinist here, but let’s be blunt. Most HYIP investors tend to be men, as do the admins. Therefore when a woman comes along to front this organization a lot of people are caught off-guard, mistakenly thinking that she’s less likely to be so poisonously dishonest as the men you are used to dealing with. Not a bad trick from the scammers point of view!

The other trick used by this group of people is to hijack as many public discussion platforms as they are allowed (again, this isn’t MNO) to attack all the competition. It’s not just to guide you into their own fast scams you see, they also need to dispute and discredit any serious program which they are not running. They want to keep you away from good programs, because your investments there are not going to support them.

The second main group of bloggers are a partial mix of chancers and the easily mislead. I don’t want to say they are “stupid”, (though some might say even that would be an insult to stupid people!), they’re just not quite what they would like you to think they are. The thing here is that anyone can open a blog. You can do it for free, and you don’t need a license. Trouble is you also don’t have to have even the faintest grasp of the subject you wish to talk about. These are purely commercial ventures, and in absolutely the same way as HYIP websites, are set up exclusively as vehicles to make money for their owners at no personal expense. OK, everyone’s entitled to earn a living, I just find this type to be of no particular value to anyone else. You see just by being the sole owner and only contributor of such a website you then get to install yourself as a kind of self-appointed expert on everything. Your word is always the final one and is always the right one. Nonsense of course, because the fact is that these people bring almost no experience to the table with them whatsoever.

To make matters worse, their standard of written English is nothing short of appalling. Whatever convoluted and half-baked point they were trying to make in the first place gets completely lost in the streams of gibberish they start writing. It’s not always such a bad thing that you can’t always figure out what they are talking about by the way, because on the rare occasion you do manage to decipher it you discover its ridiculous.

It’s because such blogs are created and run first and foremost as commercial business ventures with no heed paid to the idea that maybe the blogger should really be starting from the point of wanting to share some useful experiences, insight, etc, that standards are so low. They will include every cheap scam that pays them on their monitors, and have no discernible standards for separating good opportunities from what is obviously rubbish.

The proof of this is that many of them will even advertise or somehow list programs that even don’t pay for monitoring for free anyway. They have no active stake in these programs, no experience with them, no contact with the admins to try and check them out, and yet they still manage to flash their ref links to their readers claiming they think such HYIPs might be beneficial to join. Beneficial for them that you join that is, not for you. All you need to do is throw away good money after bad on every idiotic scheme the blogger brings to your attention. That way he continues to get paid, and you, well, like I said above that’s your problem, not his.

Such blogs are just as dangerous to follow as the professionally organized groups of online thieves that I warned you about in the first group of blogs. Without any credible experience, they become very easily manipulated by the paid posters who hijack any kind of public discussion area the blogger may operate. Shout boxes, chat rooms, readers forums, or whatever, they have absolutely no idea how to correctly moderate these things. They seem to think that ANY activity is better than no activity, and will stand idly by and watch some very shrewd HYIP collaborators with their own personal agendas try to misdirect, misguide, and just plain lie to real investors who are badly in need of some better advice. Gossip, slander, personal attacks, foul language and swearing, rumors, blatant lies, it’s all good as long as someone is talking. I’ve even seen some shocking racist epithets, disgusting incidents where readers were abused about ethnic and religious backgrounds, not just go unpunished but even go completely unchallenged by the blog owner. I don’t need to repeat the sort of expressions here, I think you all know the kind of words I mean, and it’s the sort of thing that would get an instant and deserved ban on MNO and any other right thinking blog. But not on certain other blogs where it seems cheap sensationalism trumps good information every time.

As regards the programs such blogs do include, granted sometimes you will find some good ones, but if you do I can assure you it’s just a coincidence. There are no filters or vetting process in place for separating the good from the bad, that’s just something these guys are not capable of, though then again that was never really the idea. Just dump everything in together and let you figure the rest out yourself. Good job! Probably just as well mind, the people running them have no idea what they are doing half the time. They start their blogs as a money spinner, standards be damned, and they keep it that way until the readers either wise up and move on, or lose too much money by listening to someone they mistakenly trusted and just leave the industry.

So where does MNO fall into all of this? I don’t want this to be an exercise in self promotion here, God knows I really don’t need it anymore, and can say with all honesty that I can take a position of 100% neutrality. I’m not going to lie to you here, I have no problem admitting that financially speaking I’ve done very well from MNO. For anyone who allows jealousy get the better of them I will also tell you that I worked 80 hour weeks on it, going months without a single day off or getting paid at a time when there was no money to be made from blogging. So yeah, when I tell you I paid for a big house and all its furniture and have no mortgage and no debts I do feel that I worked hard for it and earned what I have. It’s been many many years since I cared what the assorted cowards and trolls who make no effort to better themselves but hate anyone else who does have to say about it either.

My point here is that I am not financially dependent on HYIPs or MNO to have a good lifestyle. Therefore I cannot be bought. I am happy to share my experience, learnt the hard way, with anyone who needs it. I always tell the truth exactly as I see it, pull no punches, am on nobody else’s payroll, and have no vested interest in the programs I monitor. Yes they pay for the service, but I make it clear to them that that service is an accurate portrayal of whether they are paying or not. Not Paying does not get you Paying Status on MNO in exchange for any bribes, all it gets you is “Not Paying”, no matter who you are!

Though I was in the industry as an investor a lot longer, I’ve only been blogging about it since 2006 (the current version dates only from 2007). Long enough to earn lots of experience think you’ll agree. I have no connection whatsoever with the admins advertising on my site and so you can be sure that all the reviews will be unbiased and will reflect only my personal point of view. Besides, the prices for monitoring and banners (banners can only be purchased by the programs listed on my monitor) are the highest in the HYIP industry and there are no discounts for listings which makes them affordable only to the really experienced admins with big advertising budgets. Thus, MNO is the only beacon of light you can count on in a sea of corruption and deceit. Choose the right blog to trust and you will get rewarded by constant profits, choose the wrong one and the chances of losing from HYIPs significantly increases. You can see more advantages of following MNO and get links to the MNOFridays articles that will be done regularly from now on. Updated and edited articles from previous years will appear soon on a specially created section of the website over the coming months, so you’ll be able to access unbiased information telling you how the HYIP industry actually works a lot more easily.

DAILY NEWS FROM THE HYIP INDUSTRY

MNO TALKBACK – POLL RESULTS AND NEW POLL ADDED

Carbon7 (reviewed here) has become the brightest example of what a program can achieve with the right advertising strategy in mind, meaning being exclusively listed on MNO, at least during the first stages of its development. The enormous success of Carbon7 has proven that MNO is the only resource that matters to serious investors, as already hundreds of investors joined and even more started promoting it for free, thus saving the admin thousands of dollars of useless advertising expenses on mostly average monitors. That’s what it means to stick with the leaders of the HYIP industry as such a partnership can be very fruitful and tells people much about the admin’s experience. Such smart admins can be seen from a mile away and the choice of being exclusively monitored on MNO – what GoldNuggetInvest did when becoming the #1 biggest program in the entire HYIP industry – and Carbon7 is definitely from the chosen few who still remember the golden age and try their best to replicate that success even now.

Having said that, I totally agree with the vast majority of my readers who voted in the latest poll about the possibility of becoming the leader of the HYIP industry while only being exclusively listed on MNO. No wonder that almost 46% of readers think that it’s possible as it will bring gradual growth and help the program become famous on its own merit. 27% of you also think that it’s possible but only if the program in question accepts SolidTrustPay and Payza – once the pillars of the HYIP industry and now growing in popularity once again. That’s a whopping 73% of readers who firmly believe that such a phenomena like GoldNuggetInvest can happen in the HYIP industry once again and all we have to hope for is an experienced admin on board who knows what he’s doing and is ready to take the challenge to become the leader the HYIP industry so urgently needs now (read more on that in the recent MNO blog article on the leadership posted here). Of course we should also remember that 27% of people don’t believe that exclusive listing on MNO manages to do the program any good as the situation has changed over the last few years. Well, again have a look at Carbon7 to see that it very much is still the situation – and the fact that the program so far is only officially listed on MNO had been met with such great enthusiasm proves that point invalid.

Anyway, this week I believe has proved that the situation in the HYIP industry got much better than it has been since the start of the year. The biggest admins finally returned and opened some very promising programs within a week of each other, and I firmly believe that next week will bring us more exciting investment opportunities. So maybe I should also ask readers about it in the next poll for the MNO TalkBack page which is going to run for at least the next week to ten days. So, the first question asks: “Is the HYIP industry on the way to recovery in your opinion?” and the possible answers will be:
1) Yes, it’s definitely improving with some promising new programs.
2) Possibly, it’s hard to say at the moment.
3) No, it’s only temporary and will trail off again soon.

The second question up for debate MNO TalkBack today will be asking you about your personal summer plans now that the HYIP industry is becoming more active with a lot of buzz around the new big programs joining MNO this week. The question is: “Are you planning to invest more in the summer than you did last spring?” and the possible answers are the following:
1) Yes, I see more great opportunities, so I will take a chance and invest more.
2) Possibly, depends on my personal circumstances, things might change quickly.
3) No, I’m planning to stay low and wait for autumn which will bring big programs.

Thanks for all active participation on the MNO TalkBack page in advance and the results of the polls will be very interesting to analyze. Something really exciting is brewing up and the summer is promising to be hot. Stay with MNO to find out more on that soon!

GET PAID REPORT FOR 05/06/2015

Here is the list of the programs from my monitor that paid me for the last 24 hours:
From MNO Sticky list: –
From MNO Premium list: PokerAutomatics, InfinityFinanceCorp, AtrexTrade,  Cryptoconomist, EmpireFunds.
From MNO Standard list: CompassBusiness, Carbon7, LancorIncome.
From MNO Basic list: EternalGet.

That is all for tonight, guys. No news as all the listed programs are still paying as usual. I’ll be back with the latest news and updates for you tomorrow in my news article. The first item will be a more detailed look at a very promising program again coming from a very experienced admin (his last effort was a huge hit on MNO in late 2014) called LancorIncome. Although only on Standard listing, I believe it’s going to take off nicely judging from the admin’s experience, so don’t miss tomorrow’s article on MNO. Thanks for reading, guys!