This will be my first post in this New Blog on this New Site which marks the start of my New Business. It's just a tiny part of the much bigger picture.

I started working on the site April 25th, 2006 and today is May 11, 2006. You may notice that I dated this post April 25th. But that's only because I wanted to have it be the first post on the blog.

I'm 30 years old, born in 1975. I've done a little of a lot of things so far and I'm looking forward to doing a lot more. I started out by almost dropping out of High School. In my 9th grade year I had 3 Ds and 3 Fs. Bad attitude about the American school system. I didn't want to participate. But in 10th grade I decided to swallow my pride and at least get the diploma and get the hell out of that system.

Right out of High School I joined the Air Force and was there for a couple years before getting released on an enlistment "technicality". After that, I did a short stint as a car salesman and learned about the typical slime that defines "car salesman". Then I went to a tech school where I learned very little I didn't already know, but got a nice degree and a job making halfway decent income at a helpdesk.

After about 6 years of working tech jobs and increasing my income dramatically year after year, I got interested in Real Estate Investment. And 4 years later I had dabbled in that enough and decided to quit my job and do it full time. That was last summer 2005.

I haven't worked a day in anyone else's company since October 2005. Starting fresh in a new city in Real Estate was challenging. But most challenging of all was being self employed. It really takes a new mindset to be productive on a consistent basis when there is no one telling you from moment to moment what productive means right now.

I spent the majority of these last 7 months since I quit my job studying everything I can get my hands on with Real Estate and self improvement. And the rest of the time, I've been working on the actual business of investing in property. But in the last 2 months, I decided to take a break from Real Estate and learn the business of Internet Marketing.

And that's why I'm here and you are reading this webpage. I learned in my working with Real Estate Investment that Marketing is the key to success. And if I want to be extraordinarily successful with investment, I need to learn to be extraordinarily successful with marketing.

Take my skills with programming, problem solving, and working with people and you get a community website dedicated to helping other people learn exactly that which I intend to become an expert in.

It's a commonly held truth that the best way to become very good at something is to teach others. So, here we are. I'll learn and share. And I hope you will join me so we can all profit together.

-Shane

What is HYIP?

The acronym stands for High Yield Investment Program. The idea behind them is to create a program with many people can invest very small amounts of money and get high rates of return. Most of the programs claim to do this by using e-currencies like eGold for efficiency of payment which they then invest in high yield ventures like day trading or foreign exchange trading.

How do they work?

For the most part, they don't. They are almost all scams of a form called "Ponzi" which is named after a famous incident where a man named Ponzi first popularized the strategy. It's also known as a pyramid scam. You basically start with taking investments from people, and then as the return for the earliest investors is coming due, you use the money from the new investors to pay. You don't have to make any money because you are bringing in new money to pay the interest. As long as you can continue to bring in enough new money to pay the investors and they keep their investment in, you can keep the scam going. Then when the new investment isn't enough to cover paying out, you just stop and take the money and run.

HYIPs almost always turn out to be scams. A recent famous one was 12dailypro.com where the leader made about $50 million before the program collapsed under investigation from the federal government in the U.S. in the spring of 2006. Most of them have servers off shore in a country that doesn't have laws against Ponzi scams. But there are many that try to look like a legitimate activity like 12dailypro.com did. They made users visit 12 websites a day to qualify to get paid. So it wasn't an investment, it was more like a job that paid huge returns on capital invested. When it fell apart, only the people who got in and out before the freeze got their money back. Now the government is working to sort out getting back the investments for the rest. But likely most of it will be lost to the investors who got out early.

Why are they still so popular?

Greed primarily. People who get into these programs often know that it can't be legitimate. They know that they have to make their money and get out or be caught. They know that there is no value being added in such a program. It's just a gamble where there are winners and losers. So, just like gambling is popular, so are HYIPs.

Are there exceptions?

There may be some programs going by the moniker HYIP that really do use the money to make real investments and pay returns with the profits. But the returns won't be the 12% or higher weekly returns promised by the scams. They will be more in line with traditional investments.

Overall, it's a risky plan to get involved with any HYIP. If you look at them as a game where you put money in like gambling, you might be ok. But if you actually expect to come out ahead in the long run, you better be good at gambling.