Vol. 18 - Email sent to all blog subscribers!

Hello all! I just wanted to drop a quick note here to tell you that I've sent out an e-mail to all blog subscribers about an extremely interesting, very private opportunity. The e-mail will not come from FeedBlitz, it'll be directly from my address. So, check your e-mail addresses and enjoy!

To those who aren't subscribed to my blog - I apologize but I really can't make this public, it is just too good and private therefore I decided to only discuss it with my blog subscribers. You're always welcome to subscribe now if you haven't already, but keep in mind you'll have to e-mail me to tell me that you've just recently subscribed, if you want me to forward you the latest e-mail on the private opportunity.

Have a nice day everyone, until next time. :-)

Vol. 17 - My rant on Windows Vista

Hello everyone. Today I'm not going to talk about HYIP but I'll talk about computer operating systems. Since the vast majority of visitors to my blog use Windows, I think my rant today might interest some of you. Specifically, I want to rant about the just released new version of Windows named Windows Vista.

Well in essence my rant can be summed up in one sentence - What is the big deal with this thing? For months and months, I've been seeing articles about it on both technology sites, and mainstream news sites (CNN, BBC, etc.) as well. Everyone is talking about how "great" it looks, and how "it's a totally different experience from Windows XP". Usually, on any article you see on Windows Vista you'll see a screenshot that looks similiar to the following:

I suspect this image is used because it demonstrates this new version's "Flip 3D" feature, whereby your open applications can be visually demonstrated in a quasi-3D manner as you see in the screenshot, thus eliciting "wooow"s and "ooooh, neat" from the average Windows XP Joe Simpleton.

Well, I say, hello, has anyone ever seen Mac OS X? Has anyone ever seen Linux? I mean the obvious answer must be no, if a picture like that can impress you. Other operating systems have looked better than Windows for years, and now Windows comes along and rips off some features from other systems (in particular, from Mac OS X), they change the name of a few things (they rip off OS X's "widgets" and in Windows Vista they call them "gadgets"), they make a shiny new packaging, slap on the name "Windows Vista" and there you have it - they will try and get everybody to go out and pay for this piece of software (I was going to call it with a different name, but I didn't :-) ).

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, since I've read reviews saying "it's a totally different experience from Windows XP". I used Windows Vista on a brand new computer preloaded with Vista, to get the best experience. Well, I admit that it looks better than Windows XP.. and that the first few seconds of playing with the "Flip 3D" feature makes you think it's pretty neat. The sidebar is a welcome addition (although it's a ripoff from Mac OS X). However, other than that? Where's the meat? Why should I upgrade? Why should I be impressed? After only a few minutes of using this computer, in particular playing around with the "new" features - I got bored of it. Essentially it's just the same old Windows, with a new name, and some improved graphics.

Since Windows/Microsoft still seem to not have resolved the "blue screens of death", and occasional program crashes in Windows XP (they still happen to me, to this day), I think they should work on that! What good is a machine with snazzier graphics if it still hangs on you?

That's the end of my rant. Of course, despite this rant, I'll probably end up using Vista myself whenever I buy my next computer since it'll probably come pre-installed!

Vol. 16 - Something to read

Hello readers, how have you been? Wow, I haven't written anything here in 4 months, that's incredible! So what have I been up to? Well my portfolio certainly has changed over these past few months, I'm not playing around with the games (HYIPs, autosurfs, etc.) anymore and I'm concentrating on opportunities that generate real profits (i.e., non-ponzi).

I would like to come up with something nice to write about sometime in the next few weeks, but for today I just want to link to something that was written by someone else. The link is here: http://dolphinswink.com and you need to scroll down to where it says "Being Too Emotional About Money"

I very much agree with what the author wrote there, especially the last part. You might find it to be interesting as well. Enjoy!

Vol. 15 - Managing your blog subscription

For those of you who are subscribers to my blog, I wanted to explain something to you about how Feedblitz works. When I update my blog, as you have seen Feedblitz sends you an e-mail notification. After my last update (yesterday), I had 4 people unsubscribe to the blog, which is understandable because some people don't like to receive too many e-mails in their inbox all the time. However most of you are probably unaware that Feedblitz features a way to stop the e-mail notifications, but remain on the list as a subscriber.

I use Feedblitz to manage my e-mail list and blog subscription at the same time, and if you remove yourself from the blog subscription - you wouldn't receive any of the e-mails I send out to blog subscribers only. What do I send out in those e-mails? Usually I'll talk about a program that's paying me, weeks earlier than I talk about it on my blog, and in some cases I'll have a really great opportunity which I'll share only with blog subscribers, but not actually post about it on my blog at all. So that's the main benefit of being a subscriber.

However if you'd like to be on the list, but you don't want to receive an e-mail notification every time I update the blog, there is a way to do it. Simply 'pause' your subscription. You can do this by going into Feedblitz - log into your Feedblitz account (if you're a blog subscriber, you automatically have one and you should have a password), then click on 'Manage your subscriptions' and on the next screen click on the Pause button as indicated by the arrow in this screenshot:


By clicking on the Pause button, you will still be on my mailing list and therefore eligible to receive anything I send out to subscribers only, however you won't receive the e-mail updates from Feedblitz every single time I update my blog. The choice is yours! :-)

Any questions, feel free to leave a comment or contact me by e-mail.

Vol. 14 - $2,340 payout from Compact Surfing

A friend of mine recently received her first payout from Compact Surfing - and she was so ecstatic about it, despite the amount being only $2,340! This is her first 'autosurf' experience and she still can't believe how easy it was, 9 days of surfing and she got paid a month's salary! Anyway, I taught her how to do a screenshot and I blocked out some details for her but here is the screenshot of her payment (click on it for the larger size):




It took 3 days for the cashout request to be processed instead of the usual 2, but in Compact Surfing's terms you'll find that they specifically specify they have the right to take up to 7 business days to process a payment. To date though, they seem to process most payouts within 2 days, and occasionally 3-4 days. They are pretty reliable so far!

Also, I mentioned in my last post that they were working on Compact Pay - well, Compact Pay has been launched since then and it seems to be fully operational. Membership in CS has exceeded 20 thousand members, and it's still growing quickly. Of course nobody can predict how long this program will last, but at this point in time - it seems to be the indisputed 'king' in the autosurf industry, possibly poised to take over the gap that 12 Daily Pro left open. Time will tell... :-)

Vol. 13 - Compact Surfing pays!

Hello everyone, it's been a long time since my last update. I thought the time was right to write about one of my favorite programs - Compact Surfing. This program is an autosurf, it's about to hit its 3-month anniversary and it has reached about 20,000 members at the time of writing.

Characteristics:

• Pays 13% for 9 days, which equals 117%. So you earn a 17% net profit plus you get your principal back.
• Ad units cost $10 a piece and you may have 1000 units, for a maximum of $10,000 in the program at any given time.
• Payout is manual, you click on 'Request Cashout' from within your Member's Area. They seem to almost always pay within 48hrs of requesting cashout. By the way, you may request cashout at any time - you don't have to wait for your upgrades to expire. As long as you have at least $10 in your cash balance you may request a cashout. That's pretty cool I think. You have 3 cashout requests per month that you may use.
• Payment methods accepted: e-gold, and bank wire as far as I know. They are working on CompactPay which will be their payment processor and they will have their own debit card solution soon. Also, I'm hearing that e-Bullion will be added as a payment option, which is fantastic!
• Pays 5% referral commissions

Pros / Why I think it's a relatively safe bet to make money on Compact Surfing now:

• They claim to pay within 48hrs and my experience so far has been that they really do. The other day for instance I requested a cashout, it was paid to my e-gold account within the day, I then loaded the e-gold instantly onto my mygcard debit card, I went out to town to withdraw the cash at an ATM, and spent the money at the mall. :-)
• They have a due diligence page at http://www.compactsurfing.com/dd.php with a lot of information about themselves - feel free to check it out. You can see that they are a registered, licensed financial company in Panama. They claim that people are welcome to go visit them in person at the following address:
  

  Altus Financial Services Inc.
  The Century Tower
  20th Floor, Suite 2007
  Avenida Ricardo J. Alfaro
  Panama City, Republic of Panama

I don't know anyone who has gone there in person to visit them yet but I'm sure there have been, and if there haven't been yet - then it's probably only a matter of time until someone does. I will post about it if I hear about any stories on people going there in person to do DD on them.

• They have telephone support.

Toll Free: +1.800.650.7089
Main office: +1.213.985.1909
Liechtenstein office: +423.66300.9578
Fax: +507.264.6361

and yes I have called one of their numbers once to ask them a question, and my question was answered quickly, and satisfactorily by the gentleman who answered the telephone.

• Of worthy note - they specifically mentioned that once they implement their debit card, they will NOT force members to use it to continue being paid. Another program - PhoenixSurf - is in the process of making such a move, and I believe it will deal PhoenixSurf a death blow. People LIKE e-gold and they want to continue using it; when people are forced to give up their privacy to some unknown debit card company, and then forced to pay extra monthly fees & such, they are turned off. This, I believe, will only strengthen CompactSurf's position in the autosurf industry since there will be many unhappy ex-PS members flocking over to CompactSurfing.
• Growth in the program is strong, and there is plenty more room for growth - I believe they are at about 20,000 members right now. 12 Daily Pro lasted up to about 350,000 - 400,000 members before it was shut down by its payment processor scampay (StormPay). Note that both 12 Daily Pro and StormPay are both based in the U.S.A., thus making it relatively easy to be shut down. Altus Financial Services (company that runs Compact Surfing) however is based in Panama and e-gold is based in St. Kitts & Nevis (an island nation known as a financial haven), so I don't believe they will get "shut down" by an external entity like 12DP did.
• They are not only running Compact Surfing. The Compact Network is comprised of different sites which are revenue-generating. Compact Phone Cards sells SIM cards, telephones, etc. Compact Offshore Services helps with setting up offshore structures. Then there is Compact Lottery, and others as well, you can see the complete list at http://www.compactnetwork.com. This is good because it means they have other revenue streams, so they are not only relying on new participants' funds to be able to pay out older participants. Also you can check out their forum at http://www.compactforum.com.

Cons / Negative aspects to consider:

• There is no doubt in my mind that the program's financial model is at least partly ponzi.
  
What do I mean by partly ponzi? I mean - I believe that to some extent, when Compact Surfing is processing payouts, at least a portion of new members' funds are being utilized to pay older members' payouts. That's where I get the 'partly' ponzi. So what this means of course is that as long as growth is good, everything is fine and dandy. There comes a point however, where growth slows down and the program is unable to sustain paying out older investors, at which point the problems begin. I don't foresee this happening any time soon with Compact Surfing however, as it's still young and it looks positioned to be here for at least another several months, in my opinion.
• There is no explicit guarantee that you'll get paid. Of course, this is something that you can say about any investment program. There are no guarantees, that's the way it is in these kinds of programs. However having said that, keep in mind that I wouldn't be telling you about this program if I thought that there would be a high risk that you'll lose money. I look through many different programs, all the time, and I rarely talk about a program I'm in on this blog. If I just wanted referral commissions, I could be blasting out my referral links to a bunch of different programs every day, in the hopes of earning referral commissions. I am not like that, I don't care for that sort of thing. I will tend to only discuss programs that I sincerely believe you can make money on relatively safely.

My recommendations on how to play it:

• Very conservative / safest (lowest yielding): Plain and simple - go in with the max, $10,000. You'll get your $11,700 after only 10-11 days (9 days of surfing + 1-2 days to get paid). Take the $10K back to the bank and just play with the $1,700 profit, you have zero risk at this point and you can only make money, you can't lose any.
• Moderate / average risk (moderate yield): Go in with whatever amount you'd like (I recommend the max of $10,000) and put back a portion of the payout to the bank, and only go back in with the remaining portion of the payout. How much is up to you and your risk tolerance of course.
• Aggressive / risky (highest yielding): Go in with $10,000 and continue going back in with $10,000 so you are pocketing $1,700 of net profit every 10-11 days. This is how the hardcore players do it, in the early stages of autosurfs/hyips... because they know their chances are good that they'll keep on getting paid (if the program is good). Then once the program looks like it's gotten too big and shows signs of cracking, they pull out their money... only to repeat this strategy once again, on the next program. There are people who earn 25,000 dollars a month doing this stuff, and they've been doing it for 2-3 years. I'm not kidding.

Should you decide to sign up, my referral link is https://www.compactsurfing.com/index.php?ref=10214 and click on 'Sign Up' which is on the left. I will offer 50% commission back for anyone who signs up and deposits the maximum which is $10K. Please keep in mind that this information I'm giving you about this program is time-sensitive. If you think "I'll just sit back and watch what happens for a few months to make sure this program is still around, and then only at that point I'll join", then I can tell you you're wasting your time. This is time-sensitive info I'm giving you, and I'm telling you that I think you'll make money if you go in NOW. I don't know what I'll think 6 months later. :-)

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns - feel free to contact me, and/or leave comments here on the blog.

Vol. 12 - Hong Kong was cool!

Everyone, I'm sorry I haven't updated this blog in two weeks. I'm not making any excuses - the true reason I haven't updated it in so long is because I've been overwhelmed by interest in the private program that I launched a month ago. I was in Hong Kong last week for just 2 days, and when I got back home in Japan, I had about 100 e-mails to reply to from interested participants in the private program from all over the world! It was insane!

Anyway finally things have settled down, so I just wanted to tell you that Hong Kong is COOL! I don't know if it's the fact that I was paying for the subway, the buses, the tram, and buying food at 7-11's with electronic money (Octopus Card) which was so cool, fast and efficient - or if it was the ridiculous amount of skyscrapers that surrounded me (not just office buildings, but apartment buildings are skyscrapers in Hong Kong!), or if it was the fact that I was able to have a Hong Kong cell phone number within a minute, when I stepped into a 3 store (3 is a cell phone company) - I paid the man 100 HKD ($13 US) and he popped the SIM card into my GSM cell phone, and I was making & receiving calls, and sending & receiving SMS's, with a local Hong Kong cell phone number, just like that! No identification required.. just a 100 HKD bill! I don't know, the place just amazes me.. it's one of those places that I recommend to anyone to visit, if you haven't done so already.

About the pictures - I've posted a couple up above here, that I took with my aging digital camera. Click on the picture to see a larger size.

The first one was the view from Victoria's Peak, overlooking central Hong Kong. There is a fun tram ride that will take you up there, it only cost like $30 HKD which is about four bucks (bucks = American slang for US Dollars) for the round trip. My camera doesn't really do the view any justice, the view was absolutely stunning, I just need to get a proper camera one of these days!

The second one was the view from the roof of the hotel. Those apartment buildings you see in the background were some of the small ones, not the larger ones, by the way :-)

Finally, since this is a blog about High Yield Investing, not a personal travel diary, I'll throw in a little bit of information in regards to offshore banking. HSBC in Hong Kong is an excellent bank, in my opinion, and is a great place to stash your money if/when you earn large amounts of money through your investments. If you weren't aware of this, Hong Kong has laws similiar to those of Switzerland in regards to banking privacy. So if tax authorities, governments etc. go knocking on Hong Kong's door, Hong Kong won't give out your information, it is considered private. That is excellent, and I wish all banks/countries were that way. The only catch is that you do have to travel to Hong Kong at least once to open up the account. After that, you can control your account, do wire transfers, do anything you'd like through HSBC Online Banking. You can have your account in multiple currencies (like I have), you can really do anything you'd like, all through the Internet. You also get a nice little gadget called the security device so hackers can't get into your bank account, even if they get your username and password.

There are plenty of other countries which are great for offshore/private banking, but just to let you know, Hong Kong is one of them. Although it's officially not a 'country' - it's been officially part of China since 1997 I believe - the reality is that, it's a special region, which from what I can see and tell, operates pretty much as a separate, independent country. Hong Kong has been known to be one of the best if not the best capitalist societies in the world. They have low taxes (NO taxes for foreigners like me though), and I believe they have no capital gains taxes whatsoever. So, just something to keep in mind when you become wealthy, Hong Kong is one of your options for your offshore banking needs.

Just so you know, I will continue spending most of my 12 hour workdays on gathering funds for the private program, since it is WELL WORTH IT. Bank note trades are the holy grail of the investment world and unfortunately it is a world that is plagued by scammers who prey on newbie investors and their lack of knowledge, thus robbing them of their hard-earned funds. Luckily for you though, we will be entering a real bank note trade and the 40-50% per month profits with no risk to your principal are so many people's dream come true... it is really so exciting and I just can't wait! For those of you on my list - keep the funds coming, we still haven't reached the required minimum but we're getting there. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about but are interested, please contact me for further information.

Vol. 11 - Update sent on private program

For those of you who expressed interest in the private program offer (with no risk to your principal), I have sent out an e-mail yesterday as to the progress of our pool.

If you are interested but you never received an e-mail from me, or if you are interested in participating in the pool but you were unaware about this private program, then you're welcome to contact me. I won't publish too many details here on the blog at the moment, but the returns are double-digit per month and your principal is not at risk whatsoever. So it is quite attractive, of course.