[ertwin]

I've got a few rules in choosing HYIP's, and although I am a relative newbee, they are serving me pretty well!
I only have one problem, and that is that unfortunately very few HYIP's conform with my rules
So here goes:

1) A proper whois search. I don't care they're anonymous, most HYIP's are illegal anyways, if you find a name they'll be registered where HYIP's are legal and it wouldn't help you one iota if you lost money... You'll see how long the site is registered, and for how long. I want to see at least a 2 year registration. 1 year means they are setting the site up as cheap as possible.

2) Check if they're on a dedicated server, or at least have a unique IP. Sites hosted on cheap hosting means the admin most probably does not have any backing funds.

3) Do they have DDOS protection? Or are they at least hosted on HYIP specialized servers, as they have pretty good DDOS protection anyway. Again not cheap, so you'll know the admin has some cash to afford himself all that stuff.

4) Scripts. Massive amounts of goldcoder stuff around, and hardly any are licensed (i.e. bought and paid for). The internet is swamped with cracked goldcoder scripts, and most have back doors. The e-currency accounts of admin stand a good chance of getting drained of funds by those who are offering the free hacked scripts. I don't care about the admins, I care about my investment!
Tomacero seems to keep a tight ship, so their scripts are not or very hard to find for free. At a 120 $ not exactly cheap, so admins using that are likely to be a bit more serious!

That's about it in choosing HYIP's. To check 1,2 an 3 I use domaintools. In the "server data" box, click on reverse IP, and you'll immediately see the site is on shared hosting or not. Example:

There is 1 domain hosted on this IP address.
1. Talkgold.com

This is good. Only one site, so dedicated IP at least. Double check by entering the IP address in the address bar of your browser, it should bring up the site!

My whole reasoning for the above is:
The majority (99.9%) of HYIP's are Ponzi's, which means they are a scam. In a Ponzi, only early players make money.
The majority of the HYIP's are started by people in need of money, a quick scam if you wish. They are not flush with cash, they sure as heck ain't willing to spend hundreds of US$ in setting the thing up.
For a HYIP to conform with my above rules, they'll have to cough up several hundreds of US$ to get their site going.
Which means they have the cash to sustain the Ponzi innitially, i.e if some bloke throws a rather big sum at them, they can pay him out and he obviously will advertise, which will bring in fresh cash.
A ponzi without the cash will have to resort to selective payments early on, after which it will be dead very soon due to lack of new cash coming in.

Look at all the longer running HYIP's. They are all properly set up conforming to my rules. They will still pack up eventually!!! They just run longer!

Catch them early, invest little to start with to see if the system works, auto withdrawal etc.After a week or so run up your investments and pull out in under 4-6 weeks. I know some of them are running for several months, even over a year, I just won't risk it

And stay away from the super duper high ROI's.
Anything over 3% daily gets very suspect to me. Unless they are very popular they will run out of cash very quickly.

Good luck in playing the HYIP game!
With proper DD you WILL make some cash! You ain't gonna get rich though, not enough proper ones around, and you can't risk high amounts, so the return will be low as well in dollar numbers, eventhough the % returns are high!

Oh, and don't be emotional, I am it sometimes, and on the emotional invests I seldom win (means get more then my initial investment out)