Common Cents

NSFG: Down and Out

2007-08-24T02:47:00.000+08:00

I'm personally speechless here.

Sounds like a whole load of crap to me. It only goes to show that these clowns had no idea what they were doing. Or perhaps something even more sinister, since their last update held even more crap.

The only silverlining I can take out of this is that I was seriously really close to opening a managed account about a year ago. If that had happened and the news is true, I would've been wiped out, or at least close to it, according to the update.

Here's the update in the Gold-Horizon forum:

Yesterday evening our broker in London, BGC, made a margin call on all our accounts after a drop in equity made it impossible for us to maintain the large open negative positions we have been holding for a while. It forced us to liquidate all open market positions, including both arbitrary trades and the hedged position for an all out loss. The large negative P&L had been built up as the global equity markets plummeted following the serious credit concerns and it caused a major unwound of the carry trades, not only in the Yen pairs but also in the Swiss Franc crosses. Attempts to trade around these arbitrary positions failed and we are forced to close down the company following this margin call since we have no liquidity left. Hundreds if not thousands of hedge funds and investment firms around the world have severely suffered from this global incident and we regret not to have been able to pull ourselves through the credit crisis unharmed.

This liquidation has serious consequenses for everyone involved. Personally, I have lost my own private trading account and are now forced to sell my house and liquidate my personal assets to be able to cover expenses until I can move and I will most likely end up with a serious amount of debt to banks and credit institutes. Along the way NSFG has been confronted with obstacle after obstacle and although we have tried our very best to stear clear of these obstacles, this last financial crisis killed our dream. There is no way we can regain what has been lost and the sensible thing to do is pull the plug now and get things closed down for good.

Ken, on behalf of NSFG Ltd

July Update - Singapore-based E-gold Exchangers

2007-07-20T16:03:00.000+08:00

I know I've been dragging my feet in mud updating this blog. The reason being that there's nothing really noteworthy to write about.

However, after reading the latest entry in Digital Money World on the e-gold exchangers still in business, I feel that it's time for another update on the local scene. I've not gotten much feedback in the recent months so I'm not entirely sure if some of the exchangers are even alive anymore. Much of it is probably due to the fact that most of the local readers of this blog have already moved away from Hyips and Autosurfs, hence have little or no use for e-gold anymore.

Anyway here are the 'updates', as well as a new exchanger that recently emerged.

Entelnova - Possibly the oldest in Singapore and still working.

Snapgold - Probably has the best rates in the market for Singaporeans. Definitely still exchanging.

Wyngold - Still around.

JR Exchange - Probably still working. No recent feedback.

SG Exchanger - Probably still working. No feedback.

Active Gold - Very new, a few days old. No feedback.

June 07 Results

2007-07-01T19:45:00.000+08:00

Well, there hasn't been much to say lately. With the whole e-gold issue going nowhere fast, the entire industry is coming to a standstill. If you're looking to outexchange e-gold, right now might be a good time to do so as the rates have gone up slightly with the local exchangers.

Hyip scams are still running rampant but no one's really putting in much money. The pool dries up pretty fast when it reaches 5 figures.. I suspect quite a few of the perceived larger ones are putting up false statistics. I can't believe that the industry players as a whole are collectively stupid enough to put in 6 digits, then again, never underestimate human stupidity.

Autosurfs have practically hit the ground. In the autosurf folder of the whore capital of the world, MMG, new topics in the autosurf folder have fallen dramatically. The topics as well as the players have all fallen. Surfs do well to rack in 5 digits and 200 members. I'm glad I've left this particular part of the industry since my last article on it : Death of Autosurfs. Every once in a while patting myself on the shoulder does wonders to my ego. Just wish it'd do the same to my e-gold.

The entire climate is in such doldrums that even the pathetic leeches known as monitors are finding it hard to carry on. Visit Talkgold and MMG and read their hyip/autosurf program folders and you'd think that monitors are the only people left playing this game. Afterall they seem like the only ones posting. The sooner these leeches die off, the better it is for everyone involved.

And for the results this past month:

Infinity Shares
Well, the results haven't been spectacular, but it's still a small profit of 1.19%. The good news is that they have reopened e-gold deposits. Not too sure how that translates to real value going to their brokers since most reputable exchangers are still charging an arm and a leg to outexchange it to usable currency in the real world.

The other thing is that weekly updates seems to have grinded to a stop and I've only received a monthly one, not that it matters really. Just to inform anyone who is actually looking to join this one. For more updated information, their trader's blog is still the place to visit.

NSFG
The Jekyll and Hyde behavoir continues with this venture. Apparently they raked in 16% profit this month. While gains are always good, it doesn't mean that these jokers know what they are doing. Given their performances this year, chances are they will lose it all this month. Such is the nature of the beast, unfortunately the people at the helm haven't shown the slightest that they can tame this beast. So look out for a wild swing going the other way for July!

NSFG Trades Up Another Stinker

2007-06-07T01:45:00.000+08:00

NSFG
Plain awful if you ask me. They conveniently went on a holiday after another pathetic showing. The month of May brought up a stinker to the tune of -15.04%.

To make things worse with all the on-goings with e-gold, there would be no deposits (like anyone in the right mind would do so) and no withdrawals. Wonder what happened to the bank wire option?

Infinity Shares
After changing brokers and getting used to the new brokers, they have finally started trading again. Nothing much to divulge here since they have gone mostly private. Now, in order to join them, you would have to post in their forum and let them know who introduced you to them.

Again with e-gold and, generally, the US government acting the goat, now is not a good time to join them. Nothing wrong with the trading here, just no deposits until the whole e-gold crap sorts itself out....if ever.

Local Exchangers
Nothing much to report here except the rates to sell are crap. I've more than triple my e-gold hoard with no place to sell them. Any Singaporeans with a UOB or OCBC account (sorry no DBS) is welcome to take it off my hands. I guarantee better rates than the local exchanges out there, only problem is while stocks last (and I don't have alot on hand).

Scam Warning
Stay far far away from this program called PrivateFin. I was conned about $200 almost a month back. The bastards deleted my account and refused to respond to any of my mails. I usually don't give crap, but this one is growing as more ponzi pushers are appearing and promoting this one. Even some of the bad blogs are jumping on the bandwagon for some referral commission. Shame on you guys. So don't get conned.

This brings me to another fine whine from me. Monitors have gotta be the biggest ponzi pushers around. If you have been visiting and voting in monitors (which I haven't), you'd notice that it's so easy to make a 'good' post, while they make you jump thru hoops to make a 'bad' one. No wonder these blatant scams get away with murder.

Rates for Local E-Gold Exchangers Improve.....Slightly

2007-05-19T01:07:00.000+08:00

Since the last update, prices have gone southwards, until I checked today. Prices for select exchangers have improved slightly but it's still at cut-throat rates. Major exchangers around the globe have been waiving all around and charging ridiculous rates for people willing to take a huge discount. Perhaps the word 'profiteering' is more appropriate here. I understand the current situation is not rosy at all, but still does not justify such low rates.

Given the circumstances, I'd rather pour whatever e-gold I have into some hyips, which I have for the past 2 weeks. And frankly I've been doing pretty well. Looks like scammers might also be having trouble cashing out their money, hence 'returning' some of it back to those who are willing to take a risk (well, one can always dream).

Anyway before I digress further, there is some semblance of good news related to local exchangers. Entelnova has resumed purchasing e-gold. Their rates are similar to Snapgold, who is low anyway. WynGold and SgExchanger have the lowest rates in the market so far. Of the four, I'm currently biased towards SnapGold. Bear in mind the rates are still what most people consider 'daylight robbery'. But if you're desperate or scared, it's still an option.

There is good news however. JR Exchange hasn't gone anywhere, just taking this opportunity to upgrade the site. Their problem however lies with being unable to communicate properly.

Of course when there's good news, it's always followed by some not so good news. Goldert has biten the dust. The site is current being parked, which means....well....it means it's no longer around. Probably wouldn't bother very many people anyway, since the site's never updated, so no one knows anything.

Infinity Shares Is Going Nowhere

2007-05-19T00:04:00.000+08:00

In case you're looking for Infinity Shares, they are still around. The website is down at the moment becasue their hosting in USA has suspended the website. Possibly someone reported to the hosting company that this is an illegally run hyip.

Well, we can only wait and see what the outcome is. Anyway, you can read it here.

Anyone Remember EpaySurf.com?

2007-05-16T18:40:00.000+08:00

It's been over a year since this one reared it's ugly head. There have been murmurings around that Kent has been involved in some other autosurf scams that have plagued this 'industry'. I've, of course, been kept out of the loop with all this information since I've staunchly refused to get close to anyone.

Anyway, there's a video cast on 24Surfmonitor that reveals quite alot about what some people have already suspected, that Kent's been involved in a number of failed programs, and is still involved in some current ones. Make what you will of it. I personally couldn't care less. Kent can do whatever he likes, whenever he likes.

To view the video cast, visit the 24SurfMonitor site and click on the latest video. Mind you, the video's awfully long, and for most parts, awfully boring as well. Coming straight to the point isn't one of Kent's strong points.

Just for the record, I hate to drive traffic to a monitor.

Local Exchangers Taking E-Gold

2007-05-12T13:37:00.000+08:00

Have not really been monitoring the situation. There is a flurry of activity in the rumour mill and no one knows who is right or what to believe. The prudent thing is to exchange your e-gold out to cash and see where to go from there.

As of typing this entry, only SnapGold and WynGold are accepting your e-gold and are certified reliable. As far as I know, SGExchanger is doing so too. However, don't expect good rates from any of them. These are uncertain times and you should be glad that someone is willing to shoulder the risk on your behalf.

As for the rest of the exchangers, JR Exchanger has probably kicked the bucket, which is just as well. Never did feel good about them. The rest like Entelnova and Ecurrenz are not buying e-gold at the moment.

E-Gold Indictment and Response

2007-05-01T23:53:00.000+08:00

E-Gold
As all of you should already know, e-gold was indicted on the 27th and 3 days later came up with this response. I thought the response felt like a statement filled with damaging insinuations that's going to bite e-gold in the arse in a court fight.

There's still alot of uncertainty going on with regards to the future of e-gold, with the situation going nowhere clearer in the next few of months. In the meantime, it's business as usual for e-gold.

I'm personally leaning towards taking the cautious approach and not hoarding much in my e-gold accounts, just enough to make the occasional gamble when the right situation arises.

Club-FXTrader
Apparently 'hackers' got into the account and stole all the money. I don't have much vested here. On hindsight I should have pulled all my money out of this one last month when changes were announced. I've never taken this one as a real program and have always been treating it like a ponzi.

I've never believed any program which promises a fixed percentage to be really trading in anything other than our emotions. The strange thing with this program is that there are alot of so called experts in the field of forex who actually believe that 20% a month can actually be achieved on a constant basis.

In any case, there's going to be loads of explaining to do and plenty of verification and, more importantly, validation to do should the administrator decide to release proof of hacking. All of which should prove to be an interesting drama to sit thru, afterall I've paid for the tickets.

NSFG, IS updates

2007-04-30T13:17:00.000+08:00

NSFG
They posted a 10.94% gain for the month of April. While good, still goes a long long way to replenishing what's been stolen.

They also announced that there would be no trading during the last week of May, due to another holiday they are taking.

Just thinking aloud here, but I'm still kinda curious just how many managed accounts they still have. You would expect having a handsome commission on those managed accounts (which allegedly are 90% of the pooled accounts) would go a long way filling the hole that's been dug in our pockets.

Infinity Shares
Looks like they found a new broken and doing the necessary to switch brokers. Trading would resume once the switch is done.

Due to the e-gold situation, deposits have currently been disabled.

Local Exchanges
Speaking of the e-gold situation, it seems the big 3 exchangers in Singapore are going on a profiteering run. The rates to sell e-gold has dropped drastically in the last couple of days, while buy rates remain somewhat still on the high side.

Of course this can be reasonably explained by, what I would expect, a sheer amount of people selling their e-gold.

E-Gold Trouble?

2007-04-28T01:35:00.000+08:00

I've recently got alot on my plate and haven't been actively monitoring the 'industry' on the whole. There are things that I've wanted to comment on but haven't had the time to cohesively put my thoughts together. However this e-gold situation is something that can't wait.

1mdc which has been a strong bastion for e-gold users had their accounts blocked via court orders. Not much is known with regards to the details and speculation, as usual, is rife. You can visit the 1mdc website for more inform on them.

IceGold, a major exchanger in Europe has also changed their e-gold account. Again, speculation as to why they are doing it, is running wild.

Of course more information of this can be found in DigitalMoneyWorld.com.

Chances are that all these are going to amount to nothing as the US government is weeding out all the illegal transactions and money laundering schemes going on. On the other hand, hitting on the exchangers may have more servere reprecussions for those of us with money in e-gold.

I've been a firm supporter of e-gold and all the previous rumours pertaining to e-gold have not hit such levels of magnitude nor seriousness. Somehow one plus one here doesn't seem to add up. I'm personally not advocating panic, but at the same time I'm not getting good vibes here and have cashed out most of my holdings in e-gold with the local exchangers. Time will tell how this one will unfold.

If it all goes wrong, this entire 'industry' will sink faster than Atlantis, signalling the end of the ponzi-pushing days. All in all, might not be such a bad thing afterall.

For Singaporeans looking to cash out, I would strongly recommend snapgold.com at this juncture.

Buy E-Barrel Makes the Local News

2007-04-23T23:53:00.000+08:00

The program 'Buy E-Barrel' was running pretty hot in the beginning of the year and collapsed a couple of weeks ago. This article was printed in the local papers, Straits Times, yesterday.

I saw this one being posted around in the forums I've visited, and luckily didn't put a cent into it. There were just so many reasons not to buy into the hype generated by this one.

I've a good number of friends who are working in the oil industry as traders and such deals simply do not appear out of nowhere. In fact they don't appear at all.
The rates are ridiculous.
The MLM aspect of it is ridiculous. Other than an incentive for the stupid to con other stupid people, MLM usually has no place with real investment.
Heavy Malaysian influence. I have nothing against Malaysia or the people residing there, but given the blatant number of scams that come out from there, this one was a straight no-no for me.

Unfortunately this comes too little too late for all those who have already fallen victim here. But there are similar looking ponzis out there that run along the same modus operandi. So keep yours eyes open and your money in your pockets. If you must gamble, do so moderately.

Another Local Exchanger : ECurrenz

2007-04-20T23:56:00.000+08:00

Ok, this one's pretty well recommended. And the rates are probably some of the best I've seen in town. I haven't used them yet, but if you're looking for good rates, this one's definitely the place.

The only downside for me is that OCBC is not represented yet. But if you have other local bank accounts, then this one should be alright. As with all unfamilar exchanges, go small and go slow.

New Local Exchanger

2007-04-12T16:14:00.000+08:00

Just a quick update here. Looks like there's another new kid on the block.

SgExchanger

Haven't used them yet, and probably might not in the near future. The usual suspects are still working well for me. Moreover nothing really outstanding about the rates provided.

This new one has a wide banking option to purchse and sell e-gold. It also provides 'instant' exchangers via YIM or MSN.

The thing that raises my eyebrows here is the impending use of paypal. We all know the chargeback function of paypal, and the horror stories of exchanging paypal with e-gold. Will monitor how this develops if I have the time.

As with all new exchangers, go small and go slow.

Not Dead Yet

2007-04-04T10:11:00.000+08:00

It's been awhile since I last blogged. To say the least, I've been busy with offline stuff. Just to shed abit of light to the Singaporeans reading this, someone offered me half a mil for my HDB apartment. I never had the intention of selling but the offer's so crazy I had to take a serious look at it and do my sums. So while doing this, I made a disciplined effort to take some time off this blog, although I had plenty of comments to make over various anal issues.

As for my apartment, chances are I'd still hold on to it, afterall the bulk of the money would be spent on another one since I do need a roof over my head. Secondly, my area is in for major developments in the next 3 years. On top of that, I prefer to go the rental route should I eventually move out.

NSFG
Looks like we pool members have been treated like dirt again. No updates, no news, no statements. I had to get this from a managed account user. Read and weep. These guys are either plagued with insane bad luck or the most incompetent bunch of imbeciles I've ever seen. I've personally worked with traders and none have even come close to the level of catastrophes these guys have met, time and time again. Just when I thought they turned the corner too! I'm beginning to feel I'm never going to see the light at the end of the tunnel here, let alone get out of this one unscathed.

Pay Processors
Niche market is all I'm going to say here. Too many have been riding on e-gold's coat-tails. The true standouts are those which have found their niche market. Just to give a hint of what I'm talking about:

Paypal - E-bay
NetTeller - Gambling
Moneybookers - Gambling
E-gold - Hyips, AS (or anything looking like a scam to begin with)

So basically a pay processor needs to differentiate itself with a niche market. Acting as e-gold's bitch bascially means you're just an e-gold exchanger. Nothing more, nothing less.

Referral Whores
My favourite whipping boys. I hate these bunch, I really do. Much has been made about them in the not too distant past. The unfortunate thing here is those makng the complaints really ought to take a step back and look in the mirror. You know what they say about people living in glass houses. Enuff said!

DesertSky Marketing

2007-03-10T14:46:00.000+08:00

You gotta be kidding me! You seriously have to be! Just after I posted the last entry, DSM announced that it's now part of the CEP family. Unfortunately for all the people who solely used e-gold and alertpay for this one, you just got royally screwed, since only CEPTrust will be used.

Looks like a plan to accept all these programs into under the CEP umbrella and to create a larger audience for that particular pay processor. It's going to be interesting to see how all this develops. The conspiracy theorist in me is going into overdrive.

DesertSky Marketing Programs : The Fallout

2007-03-10T13:35:00.000+08:00

I admit I've a mild obsession with what's going on with DSM, despite not being involved in them. As mentioned in previous posts, the fallout from the second closure of DSM would adversely affect the other programs leasing the same script. True enough, most of the programs under the umbrella had to annouce closure or some form of change.

DesertSky Marketing
Yet amazingly enough, DSM reopened and just announced that all upgrades/compounds would remain. The only change being the daily percentages. This is probably good news for everyone involved in the program.

The only question is....where is the money going to come from? I can understand if the principal sums are paid that extra 20%, but to include that to the compounds? That's surely going to be alot of money involved.

In the not too distant past, you could argue that there was extra income coming from leasing the script, but after the fallout, only 2 of the 5 programs are garnering any sort of income for DSM. The other 3 have already disabled upgrades.

4NewbieMarketing
This one received alot of fanfare and grew leaps and bounds, but it had to readjust during DSM's temporary closure. What's happening now is that they are merging with CEP. Upgrades have been disabled and payouts will occurs fortnightly.

The issue here is that everyone's going to be paid via CEPTrust. I can understand the marketing strategy here, but I hate being strongarmed into using something I don't want to be involved in. I had nothing negative to say about the whole CEP umbrella until today, but it looks suspiously like a well oiled ponzi. On closer scrutiny, they all do.

LucreSurfing
Well, they around to honour their terms and payout anyone not in profit. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess. They are taking time off to make a decision. Chances of a closure here is rather high, but you can never doubt how hard these admins will try to make a comeback. Afterall they do what they promised to do, then they probably would have built enough goodwill to have enough sheep bleating on their behalf.

TwilightAdz
This one has implemented a 30% cashout rule. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter if it's a 30% rule or a 50% one, as long as it's a ponzi, the only fact remains is that it will fall eventually. Moreover, as expected, upgrades have fallen by the wayside.

TurnStyleProfitShare
This one's announced a refund of sorts much to the chagrin of all the spoilt brats in the forums. Judging from the fact that it's a cleverly diguised ponzi, I doubt anyone would be getting a full refund here. Afterall referral commissions would have eaten away into everyone's principal.

AlwaysInnovateFirst
This is the only one that's standing pat as of right now. Nothing's going on, it's business as usual, except that upgrades have drastically fallen. Adding to the fact, it was never high in the first place since this one opened right smack when all the drama started. Poor timing all around.

Midas-Surf
This one's not under the DSM umbrella, but I just had a few choice words to comment on this program. Freaking SCAM! I can't believe they have come around and started to scam people again. Avoid at all costs.

NSFG : Good Returns

2007-03-09T09:19:00.000+08:00

Well, amidst all the furore surrounding the whole DSM saga, I've been selectively reading my emails and completely missed the ones from NSFG. For some reason the mails ended up in my spam folder, hence this late late update.

The good news is that they secured slightly over 19% for the month of Feburary. Pardon me if I'm not jumping for joy yet. Combined with January's result, it's a marginal gain of over 1% for 2 months.

The REAL good news here is that I'm in conversation with a managed account holder, and so far March has been a brilliant month. We're looking at gains over 5% in the first week of March. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope they don't screw this one up.

As for enthusiasm for the program, you've got to bear with my lack of it. Until the amount that was woefully under-reported/stolen is replaced, all these news really mean nothing. It's just paper gains and losses. With the huge exodus of people from the pool accounts and the stellar results, I'm expecting some proportionate replacement of those misappropriated funds. The only question here is that how many managed accounts are really left? The fewer managed accounts, means lesser fees, which in turn means a smaller replacement figure.

Moreover all these 'good news' really means squat to me. If my original amount was there, I would be making money. Unfortunately my original money was used to pay others, hence all these 'gains' merely going towards 'recovering' my 'losses'. Yes, plenty of innuendoes there.

That being said, should they managed to replace all my missing funds, you can be sure I'd play the role of a veteran politician and start flipping....and flopping my opinions on this one. Might even reconsider a managed account with them if things go well. But let's take one step at a time. Baby steps.

Understanding the System: DesertSky Marketing Script Flaw

2007-03-06T02:28:00.000+08:00

I've been meaning to post this a couple of days back after my last post, but was insanely busy with a wedding of a good friend, which completely slipped my mind (right....some good friend I am).

In my last post, I mentioned that people were not understanding the product but did not elaborate on it. I'll try to elaborate on it in the simplest terms possible.

The script DSM runs on allows compounding, which isn't a bad thing as everyone thinks. In fact it's a godsent, considering it saves both the administrator and the members transaction fees in e-gold and other processors used. It's something I've mentioned in my simplistic guide on surf programs. People compound anyway if internal compounding is not allowed. They can merely cashout and redeposit, so in itself is not an issue.

However the real problem is that the script does not account for internal compounding as payouts. When you compound internally two things happen:

1. You cashout
2. You redeposit

And it's done in that order. In the DSM script, the redeposits are actively shown, but the cashout portion is omitted, whether consciously or unconsciously. Hence creating a huge gap between daily deposits and payouts, in short the gap between deposits and cashouts are an inflated figure. This causes a false sense of security amongst many of the members, very possibly causing the program to crash at sometime.

The same flaw also occurs in all the programs which have leased the script from DSM. Sooner or later, the gap created will not be sustained and they will eventually crash. Consider this an early warning signal.

And FYI, these are the current programs under the DSM umbrella:

I'm in no way saying the administrators of these programs are dishonest, but they are probably clueless with the potential problems. Let's hope the problem can be retified before further damage is done....if it hasn't already.

DesertSky Marketing Closes It's Doors

2007-03-03T09:12:00.000+08:00

Looks like Dustin has decided enough was enough and decided to close the doors on DSM yet again. The signs were not looking good in the past week. Daily returns fell swiftly, outdoing the mini downturn in the equity markets.

Personally I think this was a good move. People were not ready for the product and played it like they would any other normal program. Until mentality changes, the only way to play the game is to get your principle out asap and play with profits. Moreover the product looked like a semi-ponzi at best and cash would eventually run out. At least with DSM, no one loses. There would be refunds to anyone not in profit.

And as usual, the forums were filled with complaints as the vultures circled the dying program, hoping to put their 2 cents worth, enhancing their own reputations. Fact of the matter is people who play 'guru', should've known the nature of the beast. Since they have proven themselves unable to overcome the beast, they really shouldn't be playing the 'guru' role. You know the saying, people living in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.

As for me, I'm glad I didn't join the program. By the time I decided it was time to get back into surf programs, I felt this one had already peaked. That said, I did join other similar programs in their infancy. What remains to be seem is if the fallout from this one will adversely affect the others. Only time will tell.

What We're Up Against

2007-03-03T04:30:00.000+08:00

I’ve been in this industry for a couple of years, and have learnt a lot (or so I think). The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is to never trust anyone. This is one arena that is filled with the lowest of lowlifes, the type that would sell their grandmothers for the odd dollar. To put things into perspective, I’ve worked for a number of years in a very well known global bank group (well known for nasty office politics) and the level of deceit and distrust is nowhere near the level of scum that resides here.

Everything you read from the monitors, blogs, info-sites and forums should be taken with a large dose of salt. Not everything presented is as rosy as it is. There are pseudo monitors that have no value other than to rake in referral commissions, blogs filled with referral links (albeit giving good commentary, but still a referral whore, nonetheless) and industrial ‘consultants’ dishing out (bad) advice in forums.

There is always an agenda behind everything that is done in this industry. And for most parts, it always invariably involves money, either directly or indirectly. Learn to read between the lines of what is typed in forums and blogs and decipher the agenda involved.

Just to give you an idea of what we’re faced with, here are a couple of examples:

Paid Postings in Forums

Tech4Money

I remember reading this in some blog a few months ago, but can’t for the hell of me remember where I got it from. It’s a website where hyip/autosurf owners can purchase ‘paid postings’ to:

bump topics to top of folder
instill confidence in readership on payments
create a pseudo environment of many participants

Yes, it’s blatant, and if you look carefully in the forums like MMG, TalkGold and some of the more popular ones, it’s not that hard to sift out the bad apples involved. I'm just pissed I was not invited in this lucrative sideline!

Dirty Monitor + Forums

My disdain for monitors is well chronicled here. There are the worst of the lot. Even the genuine ones, with good intentions can’t tell you the most important thing of all.....if the site will be around tomorrow.

Anyway I don’t really want to type too much here, so I’d leave you with a report done in MoneyMakerTalks forum. Bear in mind the following article has been spammed in numerous forums, and the forum integrity itself suffers from allegations of stat-padding and false membership representation.

However, the article itself is a damn good read, and I have no reason to believe it was falsified to slander. I believe that a lot (not 100%) of what it reveals is really happening in the industry.

HYIPocalypse: slowly we rot…

You can only be amazed at how brazen things have become. Once upon a time, such things were done covertly, now it’s so open it becomes an accepted truth.

I wouldn’t even be surprised some blogs are involved in such dealings either. Some of the blatant cheerleading coming from supposedly intelligent minds leaves a sour taste.

Conclusion

What I’ve covered here is by no means even close to the depth or level of filth that is plaguing this industry. I doubt there is any way to peel thru it all and see the absolute truth. The best piece of advice I can dish out is not to even step into this arena, unfortuntately, if you're addicted like me, we sure need therapy.

Before I end this article, I’ll leave you with a blog post that is entertaining, to say the least.

Welcome to the Masquerade

I don’t agree with it wholeheartedly, but the bulk of it makes sense. Moreover the entire blog itself is a damn good read and bloody controversial, just the way I like.

NSFG : Interesting Bit of Information

2007-02-26T23:55:00.000+08:00

I was doing my daily browsing thru the blogs and came across this interesting bit. It's was found on NoBS blog and it's worth a good look if you're in NSFG. The interesting bit is written by a user called 'Per' and it certainly is an interesting bit. Scroll down abit and you'd see it. Heck, I'll copy it verbatim for those who are not net saavy. All the urls provided are not in English.

It’s amazing how two young amateur wannabe-traders can trick people all over the hyip-world!

Did a google on www.google.dk (I’m danish…) - and Kenneth (the trader) apparently works as a sales- or storeclerk with a small wood and cardboardfactory in Farum north of Copenhagen: www.farusa.dk. Also he’s doing some banner-designs from home.. look at www.bannerdesign.dk

Check the photo on NSFG website, its taken at the factory. Then go to www.farusa.dk and see his profile and photo there: http://www.farusa.dk/dk/nyhedsbrev/3/nyhedsbrev.htm

Why will a “topgun-forextrader” still be working at the local cardboardfactory???? THEY ARE AMATEURS, TRADING AT HOME FROM THE KITCHENTABLE…!!!!! LOL!

PS: The Danish Financial Authorities denies that they have seized any funds from NSFG.. Its a scam obviously, nothing else…

E-Gold News

2007-02-24T03:33:00.000+08:00

Just read this from e-gold:

e-gold Empowers Online Gambling Sites to Refuse Payments from US Persons
On October 12, 2006, the Safe Ports Act was signed into law in the United States. As a result of the Safe Ports Act and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 contained in the Safe Ports Act, the facilitation of many forms of Internet gambling by persons located in the United States has become a proscribed activity. With the objective of preventing the use of e-gold by United States persons for unlawful online gambling, e-gold has deployed a feature whereby any e-gold account holder may configure their e-gold account(s) to block incoming e-gold Spends from accounts controlled by Users residing inside the United States or who are accessing the Internet from within the United States. Online gambling businesses using e-gold are now required to enable this new account attribute.

While this doesn't really affect those of us who are not in the US, or playing with HYIPs and such, it's interesting to note that e-gold is pro-active in keeping themselves out of trouble (or in this case potential trouble). That being said, I'm sure the circus is going to come riding thru town with the latest annoucement and the rumours will start all over again......not that it ever stopped in the first place.

Welcoming the Year of The Pig

2007-02-17T17:28:00.000+08:00

No news here or thoughts here. It's a day early, but I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year.

I'm personally looking forward to the year of the Golden Pig. It's been literally the year of the Dog for me this past 12 months of so. Everything that could've gone wrong has/had. I've had near brushes with death and disability, and accidents that have left permanent damage.

On the financial front, this past year has been quietly good due to the bull runs in most equity markets, with the more exciting times actually occurring with the online adventures instead.

Anyway here's to wishing everyone health and wealth. And remember to use a large dose of common cents when making your online 'investment' decisions.

NSFG : Something To Cheer About Or Stalling For Time?

2007-02-15T02:43:00.000+08:00

Looks like all my recent posts since returning from a rather eventful 6 weeks have all centred around NSFG in one way or another.

I just received an update from Paul, stating that they gained a profit of 10% by mid-Feb. I suppose this should have come as some good news, but I'm not impressed at all. The miserly 10% doesn't even come close to reimbursing the 66% lost when they took my money and joyfully used it to pay some others. Until that occurs, I doubt I'd be fully satisfied with anything that happens here. To put things in perspective, it doesn't even come close to making up for the 15% lost last month. Moreover I'm very sure many of the MA account holders have already jumped ship, making it more difficult for them to reimbuse us from the fees. To add to that given their recent run of trading losses as well as administrative incompetence, the skeptic in me seriously find it hard to believe they actually made such 'huge' profits.

Alternatively it looks to me like they are stalling for time hoping for a reprieve from members who have already set the ball in motion to prosecute them. I certainly hope this isn't the case and they geniunely made profits, but given all that has happened as well as the inability to recover the money, I simply cannot see NSFG flourishing.

As for me, the bulk of my money is already in limbo, hence I'm not closing my account, nor withdrawing. It's all just paper gains or losses. I'm going to see this one out, either getting all my money back or going ahead with a collective legal action.

Anyway here's the email :

Good Afternoon Everyone, and Happy Valentines Day!

I thought it was high time that we should report something good rather than all the news that we have recently had to report.

As you are all aware, last month we suffered a loss. It forced us to change our plans and bring in and use the trading strategies which we have been developing over the last year or so. Originally the plan was to change to this method at the beginning of this year, however as circumstances unfolded in the later part of 2006, we had to opt for a method that produced results while making money for the company so that we could put this into the pot on top of the trading returns. We all know how that went!

The trading method we have now employed using far less risk and far less volume, from a company perspective this does not generate anywhere near the kind of money which higher volume trading does so we can not put in large sums ourselves as we had planned......let me be clear, we STILL ARE going to be adding to the fund, however it will not be to the degree we once were able.

HOWEVER, this trading strategy is far more consistent from a actual trading return perspective, and after last month we decided that this is the way to go moving forward.

The good news is that since we have adopted this style we have had 5 weeks in a row profits and already have LOCKED IN 10% for February for you guys!!

I firmly believe that if the loss from last month was the cost that we had to pay to bring in this method, then it is a cost worth paying, as going forward into 2007 it is going to make a HUGE difference to the returns we can produce.

I thought that this was news that you would want to hear, so hence this brief update.

Have a great Valentines Day, the month is still only halfway through and I am sure there is much more to come yet!!

Paul

Quick Updates

2007-02-12T00:01:00.000+08:00

DesertSky Marketing
I've gotten a full refund as well as a 10% profit from Dustin. It's unfortunate that I've stopped the whole autosurfing thingy to rest my eyes since November. I'm sure when the doctor gives me the go ahead, I'd be giving this one a close look. So far this one's been nothing but a top notched program. How long it will last still remains to be seen, but right now it's definitely one of, if not the best, out there.

NSFG
Just to update everyone, I received my statement for the month of January and it's not something to shout about. In fact there hasn't been much joy since my money was stolen in September.

Action Against NSFG

2007-02-09T15:52:00.000+08:00

Looks like some members are going to take issue with NSFG over the alleged confiscation of funds by the Danish authorities and I'm really tempted to join in the fray. More importantly was the actions by NSFG to continue paying members in full after the incident, while sucking the remainder with the illusion that everything was fine and taking in our new deposits during that period.

For more detailed information, you can read it from the HYIPDiscussion forum.

Whatever the outcome, it's clear that NSFG is no longer a viable option any longer. I've removed them from the blog menu. As for personal opinions, I don't have any at the moment.

Lucky Escape

2007-02-08T21:50:00.000+08:00

I just completed my reservist today, and it was supposed to be a joyous occasion since this was supposed to be my last call up to serve the nation, although I've yet to receive the black and white despite being promised verbally by the higher ups.

A couple of reservist mates and I wanted to celebrate the occasion with some drinks, but our joy was short lived. On the way to our destination, we got involved in a 6 car pile up, and the car we were in was smashed up pretty badly, both from the front and the back.

Luckily the airbags were activated and by some sheer fluke, we got away unscathed. In fact it, considering how badly compressed some of the cars were when we got out to assess the situation, it was a miracle that no one was injured. Had it not for an army policy that bars us from bringing in our camera phones, I would have taken and posted the extent of the damage here.

I'm still shaken by the incident and thanking my lucky stars it wasn't anymore serious than just monetary losses. It's the incidents like this that make you appreciate life more.

NSFG
Just had an update from NSFG and there was no lucky escape here. In the bid to make up the 'losses', they apparently made an overall loss in the region of 15% for the month of January. Since I've not received any statement...yet again, I reckon I've probably lost around 75% of my entire equity here. Of course around 60% is due to the technical adjustment made when the authorities confiscated a large amount of the pooled monies.

I wonder if they have reached rock bottom or would the slide continue. FWIW, I'm still continuing with them, since it's money I'm willing to lose. However that doesn't mean I would stop bitching.

Infinity Shares
I'm pretty late with this update, but the entry has been updated. And more importantly, there was no trading done this week.

Quick Update

2007-02-04T14:51:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since I've written anything of note here. Been rather busy the past couple of weeks and it didn't help that I completely forgot I had to serve the nation. Hence I'm in the middle of my reservist training with little, close to no access to the internet. My in-camp training should last till the end of next week and hopefully I'm able to catch up on the news of the past couple of weeks.

NSFG
No idea what the f**k is going on here. Emails have not been replied to and I've not received a statement since December. The only good news here is that they have paid up for the January withdrawals. Otherwise, communication has been piss poor.

Infinity Shares
IS has posted a positive overall for the month of January. I will get around to posting the updates in the related entry when time permits.

Hyip Games
Since the middle of last year, I've been dabbling with long term games, paying anything from 0.5% - 3% on a daily basis. While there have been misses here and there, the overall result has positive. As long as you don't bet the farm, and be prepared for a loss, you should do alright.

On average, at least one such program will appear on the horizon per week, that should last a good 4-5 months, enough time to make a decent profit. I usually go in with a 3 figure sum and play it for one cycle, depending on the rates and the gestation period.

PIU : Scam or Incompetent Administrators?

2007-01-17T07:50:00.000+08:00

My personal schedule has been hectic to say the least, but I thought I'd just share some more thoughts on this matter since a couple of people have inquired. Those who have read the 'reports' seem to think PIU were indeed hoodwinked.

Scam
Let's just say the arguments for PIU in this catergory is really high.

1. For starters, where in the world did this third party fictional(?) investment company come from??? All along I (and alot of others) was led to believe that PIU did all the trading. I've never once read on any forum nor in their newsletters that they had outsourced our money to a third party company. They had always inferred that trading and other investment vehicles were done by 'their traders'.

Now all of a sudden they dropped the bombshell that they had put our money into another company. Sounds like a desparate attempt to deflect attention. Now, let's say the reports are true, I'm still maintaining that I was scammed. Had I known there was a third party involved, my decision COULD have been different. That's of course not saying that I wouldn't jump in with a punt anyway.

2. I don't believe a word of the reports, nor any of the screenshots between PIU and their 'investment company'. If I had that amount of time (1.5 months, probably more) and that amount of money in my pockets, I would sure as hell have alot of motivation to learn photoshop and do my own screenshots. Moreover I believe the plans laid for this 'disclosure' probably happened much earlier.

3. They are discouraging us from reporting them to the authorities....for our own good. Right, I have to be 10 to be believe that. If I had treated this one like a real investment, and not another hyip game, and plunged a 5 digit sum in here, you can bet I would be pulling all the stops here, if not to see any of my money back, but to see these scammers put where they belong. Lucky them I only have the minimum $100 spend here. They had never given any concrete reason to put in more, although I admit I was seriously tempted.

4. Their newsletters are pathetic to say the least. My disdain for it is well chronicled in the MMG forum. With the exception of the last 2, it all seems like motivational crap. Half the time reading them, I felt like I was listening to some sermon in a cult.

5. I'm nitpicking here, but they actually had the audacity to wish us a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The nerve!

Incompetent Admistrators
I skimmed thru their 'report' on their DD done on this fictional(?) investment company and personally I'm shocked. If you're pouring in 7 freaking digits into an investment company based in the US, then the first things you should be doing is to check if they are SEC compliant.

You would also think spending abit of money to actually visit the company and view the trading floor would be part of that DD package. I'm shocked, astonished and utterly amazed that they didn't.

Sounds like someone got greedy with our money, passed it on to some other scammers, and now they want to get away scot-free.

Conclusion
Seriously, you don't believe that bunch of crap right? Or did you buy it hook, line and sinker?

For what it's worth, the money's lost, one way or another. If you see any of it back, you should be laughing all the way to the bank....literally.

I'll end this with a quote in their latest newsletter. Things have indeed gone bad, and I'm showing my reptilian head. My hiss is, unfortunately, worse than my bite.

We know that it is of the human being to be closed when things go bad and react with the reptilian brain, but we will even though that you are responsible for your own acts to try to tell you that WE ARE VERY SORRY AND THAT WE DID THE BEST WE COULD TO OFFER YOU A GOOD PROGRAM.

Private Investors Union Bites the Dust

2007-01-15T23:15:00.000+08:00

Yup, this one's as good as dead. If you're a member, log in and read the latest news. It's not good.

Good thing I only had the minimum here. This one almost bit me had it not been for the announced holiday period. I had kept away from adding more money into the program until the 'trading' resumed.

While the website(s) are still up (PIU and BFG), it's as good as an empty shell. Of course the charade of investigation and scapegoating continues to fool anyone who cares to listen/read. And as with all programs which pull similar stunts, I'm sure it will go on for some months till everyone's forgotten about it. The one thing's for sure is that no one else will be seeing another cent anytime soon.

E-gold Stutters

2007-01-12T01:41:00.000+08:00

I haven't been paying attention to the blog for sometime due to attending the 'stag party of the year' (good friend's), and probably wouldn't be around much in the next couple of weeks either, in preparation for the 'wedding event of the year'. Adding to that, I'd be busy entertaining some friends/traders (ex-colleagues) who will be dropping over to Singapore for a holiday.

Anyway on to the post before I give a detailed schedule for January. If anyone has noticed, e-gold has been having fits the last couple of days. Maybe it's just the timing I tried to access e-gold, or the after effects of the Taiwanese earthquake, but I've not been able to reach the e-gold website on numerous occasions. Judging from the forums, I'm not the only victim here.

It's probably nothing really important, nor devastating, but one can't help but return to the last time something marginally similar happening back in Dec 05. Back then, the e-gold offices were raided and e-gold was unavailable for about 2 weeks. Of course, e-gold being e-gold returned to business and normalcy was restored.

However, that period did cause a large number of short-term hyip to go bust, being ponzi in nature. I'm not saying, nor suggesting a similar thing is happening here. But all the same becareful in playing with wildly speculative hyips/autosurfs until everything stables down. Even if the website access is just based on my locality, scammers will use the excuse to run (not that any excuse is really needed).

Just keep your eyes and ears open. I'm holding on to my gold for now....only if I can just login.....

Infinity Shares Has It's Own Blog

2007-01-05T09:47:00.000+08:00

Infinity Shares
IS just launched it it's new blog. I've updated the relevant entry.

Mida-Surf
For some reason I'm still getting emails from this scam for the past few weeks. The good thing is that this one's just a waste of space. The bad thing is that it's persistent as hell. The anal thing is that I can't delete my account coz my password's been changed, so unless I email them (which I wouldn't), I'm stuck with stupid updates from a program that's ceased payments.

JR Exchange
Looks like this local exchanger is back and working again. It probably came up somewhere during the week.

AsianPay News

2007-01-03T08:37:00.000+08:00

I'll be the first to admit that I've not keep up to date with anything remotely related to AsianPay. But I have been receiving emails from readers asking bout feedback regarding the program and subtle invitations to join their 'investment' program. I hope that everyone who got a reply from me did heed my advice and stayed away. For those of you who are clueless, I got this from NoBS.

Reason why I never joined AsianPay
There were concerns that what they did wasn't legal.

It had a branch in Singapore. To accept money in the form of investments or loans, you need a license. As far as I'm concerned, they did not have a license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide any sort of financial services. You can find a list of companies that have a license here. And luckily for us it's the beginning of the year so the list is pretty much updated.

Not too sure what happened for them to make the changes. Probably someone did file a complain with the MAS, hence the changes. No one knows for sure. Personally I don't really care. All that matters is that I avoided this one, so did my friends.

Infinity Shares

2007-01-01T02:32:00.000+08:00

Update (05/01/07) : Infinity Shares just launched their own trader's blog. Feel free to take a look at it. It brings us closer to the moves of the resident trader.

__________

I've been in Infinity Shares since June 06, and was hoping it would remain low profile for sometime. The current membership level is still low, and the amount deposited is not astronomical. Unfortunately, the lid's been somewhat blown off via DD reports done by a variety of people. Some I trust, others I have no idea even existed. You can read them here:

High Yield Weekly Digest
NoBSHyip
PPP

Not that any of that matters. Fact of the matter is that I've been pleasantly pleased with what I've been getting from this program. The rewards are not high by any means, but I have reasons to believe that goes on behind the scene is real forex trading. The current trader, Christian, is someone whom I've known in some obscure (and now defunt) forum since the middle of 2005.

As for how the program goes, it's imperative to sign up in their forums to read the FAQs. It holds a wealth of information as well as instructions on how to participate in the program. In a nutshell, you purchase shares which are traded and subsequently dividends (profits) paid out upon request. Sometimes profits are reflected by increasing the share prices (or your net value). Losses are reflected by the share price. The FAQ explains in greater detail.

The other things that stands out here is the level of communication. As investors, we're kept informed of matters regarding to the program. So far there has been an open line of communication, and nothing has been kept from us, from holidays to switching of brokers.

Another thing to note is that the currency used here is e-gold (Euros) and not e-gold (USD). This is due to the current broker they are using.

Past Performance

2006
May 06 = 16.01%
June 06 = 21.53%
Jul 06 = 5.25%
Aug 06 = -0.43%
Sep 06 = 0% (No Trading)
Oct 06 = -3.4%
Nov 06 = 1.83%
Dec 06 = 6.46%
Jan 07 = 10.97%

Unfortunately if you're thinking of signing up, you DO need a sponsor to join the program (either a random VIP member or me). So, here's the link:

My Link

Internet Disruptions

2006-12-29T12:44:00.000+08:00

Major earthquake in Taiwan caused chaos to my internet connection for the past 3 days. The undersea cables were severely hit resulting in absolutely no access to any website not from Singapore, despite the new reports. I had no access to my ISP mails, nor the web-based ones (ie Yahoo, Google).

Thankfully I didn't have any autosurfs running, nor did I have any money in any short-term hyips. So other than being terribly bored at home due to the heavy rains that have been pounding the island nation, there was not much damage done.

I suppose the entire exercise shows how reliant we are on the few cables from Taiwan. Once they went down, there was major disruption to phone lines and internet connections. Isn't redundency one of the first things you learn in Networking 101? I suppose the major telecommunication companies are so determined to suck us dry that a contingency plan to have alternative routes is too rich for them. I hope this is a wake up call, speaking of which, Singtel sucks donkey balls anyway.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-23T01:18:00.000+08:00

Ok, I'm slightly early, but the entire weekend is going to be taken up by relatives and football. So here it is, Merry Christmas one and all.

In case you missed Santa's presents, here's why.

Autosurf Leaders Fall

2006-12-19T23:02:00.000+08:00

As we all probably know by now that 13dailypro and 12by12daily have both fallen by the wayside. Thankfully I've avoided most of the mayhem for now, but the fallout resulting from these programs could very well affect me in other areas.

It's not a secret that many smaller autosurfs do infact punt their money (or your money) into the bigger more established programs. Usually when the big ones fall, those piggybacking on them will fall too. The laws of gravity is universal.

Personally I'm rather dismayed by the way 12by12 went down but it did, however, save me from eating some serious crow. I've always liked the way Dave ran things. He came across as someone with integrity and with a no nonsense attitude which is needed in this arena of weak-minded individuals and outright scums.

This entire exercise also shows a couple of things.

1. The pool of active autosurfers is small and possibly going to dwindle after this. At last count, 12by12 had bout 35,000 surfers (give or take a couple of thousand). I'm sure a large part of them are not even active.

2. A strong program can be brought down by nasty rumours.

So where do we go from here? I'm waiting for the turn of the year to see which are the programs that will establish themselves as the new market leaders. There is a void that needs to be filled, and someone will undoubtedly step up to the plate. Should be an interesting couple of weeks, especially with the holidays and all.

Local Exchangers : Where We Stand

2006-12-15T06:02:00.000+08:00

I've not been exchanging cash for e-gold or vice versa for the past few months. Partly due to my inactivity (accident), and partly due to USD falling against the SGD. However there might be a need to out-exchange some of my e-gold hoard sometime soon, since I'm unlikely to find reliable programs to dump it in.

So if there are any fellow Singaporeans looking to have a bit of e-gold in hand, feel free to mail me. I should be able to offer slightly better rates than local exchangers. But don't expect me to off load too much at a time. I like to keep a reserve should something sweet turn up.

A few fellow Singaporeans have been emailing me and asking me which exchangers are currently available, since a couple have stopped all communication. I don't keep up to date if I don't personally use the services, although I do keep in touch via the grapevine and the occasional email that keeps me informed.

Entelnova
Very possible still the strongest and best around. Their processes are somewhat more troublesome than the others, and there is a larger emphasis on verification. However with the recent case of the 'catch me if you can' scammer who used e-gold, all the added verification seems justified.

Just a note of caution (nothing serious), due to the size of their client base, the service here isn't always top notched. The other thing is that the rates aren't always the best.

SnapGold
Instant exchanges. Nothing has changed since the last update here. One of the best around, with pretty competitive rates. In fact they constantly have the best rates around.

WynGold
As mentioned before, top service by the ladies here. But that's based on my experience with them in Sept. I've since not used them nor received any feedback about them.

Chances are things are still the same here. If you do use them, please let me know your experience.

Amongst the top 3 exchangers, their rates are the worst so far. But if you're desparate for e-gold when the others are not available, they offer the best alternative.

JR Exchange
I know I've been unfairly harsh on them before, and my stance hasn't changed much.

I've not visited the site for sometime, and when I decided to pop in for a visit in late November, the site was down. Took a while to get it back up, only to find out that exchanges were suspended due to some script error.

Current state of affairs: it's been over a week since the site's been up and the script's still not been fixed. I don't know how serious they are with this business, but I sincerely hope they get their act together soon, since the advertised rates are some of the best in the business.

Bank2Gold
No one knows what's going on with them. Since the very public reports of the 'catch me if you can' scammer, this exchanger has disappeared off the face of the earth. There are been no updates and the rates still reflect that of a couple of months ago.

For now, this one seems like it's closed its doors, which is a shame. I personally liked this one the most. Hopefully there'd be some good news.

Goldert
*Shrugs* I have no idea what's going on here, and neither do I care. No update in the rates since forever and no news from any of my sources.

Myth of ProfitSharing Programs

2006-12-11T00:02:00.000+08:00

If you’ve not been around for the past month or so, the newest rage in town are the profitsharing programs that have appeared in both the AS and Hyip arenas. While they aren’t exactly sprouting up like mushrooms yet, it would be a matter of time before they get copied and replicated. It happened with AS over a year ago, and with the forever-type programs a few months ago. This industry is filled with copycat types, and when a plan works, everyone jumps on the bandwagon and follows the money trail.

The concept behind a profitsharing program (PSP for short) is a simple one. Deposits made into a program everyday are shared out to all members who purchased units or shares. Each share has a cap on earnings and when it reaches that cap, the share expires. Depending on the amount of deposits made on a daily basis, you could meet the share cap in any thing from 2 to 20 or even more days.

There are a number of reasons for the birth of a PSP program. And if the forums and explanations are to be believed, they range from:

No one loses
No fixed ROI
Reserves
Lasts longer
Keeping ‘Hit and Run’ types from destroying the program

No One Loses
Seriously you can’t believe this crap, can you? Unless the administrator is David Blaine and able to produce a wad of cash from his ass, someone has to lose.

As far as I’m concerned, PSP is no different from your everyday ponzi hyip or autosurf. New deposits will be needed to fund the ROI. Sure the rules are slightly different, but the underlying concept is still the same.

The only difference here is that no one loses EVERYTHING. With a PSP, it’s close to impossible to lose everything unless the administrator chooses to run with the loot. However, if you climb onboard late, chances are you’d lose close to everything.

No Fixed ROI
ROI is dependent on new depositors. New money coming in increases the daily ROI. This is what sets it apart from the traditional hyip, AS and cyclers with fixed ROIs.

It supposedly encourages member reinvestment but in reality, it’s no different from all the other traditional ponzis. All require money coming in to sustain payouts. I’ve looked left and right, and all I can see is the same product marketed and packaged differently.

Reserves
Most PSP claim to keep a percentage of the daily ROI as reserve funds to increase the ROI on days that have smaller/fewer/lower deposits.

Personally I see no difference. While it pads the stats slightly for the day, it can’t sustain it in the long run.

Lasts Longer
Perhaps it might last longer than your traditional ponzi, but that’s solely due to membership participation and the amount of new members it can attract on a daily basis. Sooner or later, people will realise it’s the same concept and the fad will eventually die down.

What would be interesting to see are the innovations that administrators take to enhance the product to appeal to members

Keeping HaR out
You gotta be kidding me. Seriously you gotta be kidding me. The way I see it, this is a HaR’s wet dream come true. Barring an admin who outright scams, HaR type have very little to lose and everything to gain here, especially with the type of frenzy PSP are generating.

The key here is that if you join on the first day, chances of losing is very slim. If played correctly you’d receive your full ROI by the second or third day. Much better than waiting for 5-6 days with traditional hyips.

The hole created by HaR players will still have to be filled by those who deposit later. So I don’t see how much different it is from the traditional programs.

Strategies
Everyone’s probably got a different one aligned to the goals one wants to achieve. It can range from maximising profits, protecting principal, ensuring the longevity of a program and many numerous other reasons.

How you want to play the game depends on the rules of the game, the support of membership, your own DD of the administrator running the show, etc.

The point I’m trying to make here is that one should be flexible in adopting a strategy. As Sun Tzu’s Art of War dictates, prevailing conditions determines the plans you undertake. There's no one size fits all strategy here.....or anywhere for that matter.

I’m keeping mine close to my chest.

Couple of Things

2006-12-08T17:29:00.000+08:00

Strangely after my operation, I've found myself on the internet more than before. I suppose suddenly having too much time on my hands help.

DesertSky Marketing
Everyone from the program has and should be receiving refunds (plus a little profit for some of us). However according to Dustin, some of the refunds might take up till Feb 07 to fulfill. This is all hunky dory to me.......EXCEPT he's going to relaunch the program under a new business model on 02 Jan 07.

I'm personally not comfortable with it. With all due respect to Dustin, who's probably a swell fellow, it doesn't make sense to me. In this volatile industry, having a clean reputation helps immensely. Launching a new program while in debt certainly doesn't give confidence to new members, especially after they get wind of this.

Shall see what transpires from now till 2nd Jan.

Wager Island
There's a short update on 4th Dec. Doesn't say much on a date they will return, except they will try to re-open asap.

Until that happens, I'm going to remove it from this blog.

Bouquets and Updates

2006-12-03T16:31:00.000+08:00

I'm practically typing this with one functioning eye, but I believe some form of 'thank you' needs to be expressed for the well wishes and concern I've been getting via email. I've not replied to most due to my condition, hence I'd take this opportunity to thank everyone (you know who you are) who took the effort to email this blind man.

As for the queries to what exactly happened, I'll leave a couple of websites detailing my condition as well as the procedure used.

Detached Retina
Scleral Buckle

As for getting my vision back, it's pretty much a subjective thing, depending on how well my body repairs itself. The doctors are pretty optimistic that I should get most of it back in the next 6 months.

Now for some updates not regarding my personal life.

12by12Daily
Kudos to David for expelling the two well known referral whore extraodinaires. Here's what has been said.

Referral commission is a reward paid to people who actively promote 12by12daily for the benefit of all members. Referral commission will not be paid to the likes of Tyler Cant and Vincent Teoh, who build their downlines while not supporting the program themselves, and then try and bring the program down whenever there is a slight hiccup. Both of these members have had their accounts suspended, and their referral commission removed.

Although I've not been with 12by12 for sometime, I'm going to stand behind Dave on this matter. Referral whores are spoiling the industry. I'm not against promoting a program, but promoting it just for referral commission like the 2 above mentioned swines is just sickening. What's more of a concern to me is that these swines actually have a following, despite their disgusting behaviour! And it's not the first time this has happened.

Their modus operandi is to bash a program and then offer an alternative, moving their referral base to the next big thing, leaving the original program to crash and burn. They act like experts in this field, suckering in more referral commission. Normally I don't get in the way of the crossfire as long as I make my money, but I got off the wrong side of the bed today....literally.

And while I'm on the topic of experts, there are none. Just alot of opinions and we all know how anal they are. Yes I know I'm anal too. I just don't hide it like most people do.

Local Exchangers
I've not had the time to update that entry recently. From what I do know from the grapevine and from emails is that Bank2Gold, Goldert and JR Exchange are not functioning as they are supposed to.

While the website is up, I've not been able to get to the livechat at Bank2Gold. Same with Goldert. Both have no live support. To add to that, there have been no updates in Goldert since the last one back in Sept.

As for JR Exchange, even the website is down for the moment.

So I suppose if you need to buy or sell e-gold, you'd only have Entelnova, SnapGold and WynGold.

Out Of Action

2006-11-21T22:25:00.000+08:00

I wouldn't be posting for the next month or so. The 'freak' accident has unfortunately resulted in complications to my eye, hence I have had to get an opertation to save whatever is left of it. The recovery process will take sometime, hence I wouldn't be updating this blog until I've sufficiently recovered.

Meanwhile good luck on all your 'investments'.

Take The Internet Back

2006-11-17T21:21:00.000+08:00

This is the latest offering from World Limited Partnership Program (WLPP).

It's an attempt from them to take in a share of the internet advertising pie, and passing part of the profits to 'shareholders' like you and me. The thing here is that it's not a new concept. I've seen programs that offer the same and all have failed miserably. I've no reason to think this one's different, however I've been a member of WLPP for a reasonably long time (since it's inception) and personally I like how the management handles the programs under it's umbrella.

Anyway back to Take The Internet Back. The concept is simple, it works like a paid-to-read program. They email you advertisements in return for points which is then converted into cash, depending on the amount of advertising revenue generated. As for the ratio of the profits generated, 45% goes to the members/shareholders (us), 45% is retained in a 'war chest' for future projects and 10% kept by the company. The best part is that whatever is generated from their future projects would also be owned by members (us).

The key thing here after sifting thru all the initial marketing lingo on the website is that the program is absolutely free. They do not hide anything on the website. Everything is written down in plain English, including their identities and address. This is exactly how WLPP is run, above board with nothing to hide.

While I remain skeptical of it's success, I'd light an optimistic candle in hopes that this will take off. Afterall, most of the 5 digit membership already in WLPP should be flocking to join this one. What remains to be seen is the type of advertisements that will come into my mailbox. If most of the advertisements are the run of the mill crap found in most PTRs, then this one's pretty much doomed....

....at least it's FREE.

Since there is no cost/investment involved, I'd only be leaving my referral link.
Take The Internet Back

Slowing the Pace

2006-11-13T23:36:00.000+08:00

Due to a 'freak' accident which happened last week, I would be slowing the pace of my entries until I recover (hopefully). The freak accident has left me partially blind in the left eye and according to the specialist treating it, it's going to take at least another couple of weeks before I can gain some semblence of 'normal' vision again.

As it is now, looking at the computer screen does take it's toll on the eyes and the splitting headaches as a result are just not worth it.

To add to that, I'd be leaving for South Korea in mid-December for a holiday cum business trip. I'd be meeting with a couple of oil traders whom I used to deal with while they were working in Singapore.

Both these reasons have contributed to me not joining any autosurfs in the next couple of months, while I try to pull out from those that I'm already in.

NSFG
It's been confirmed that the money was indeed taken by the Danish government. To save you all the trouble from sifting thru the mess in the hyipdiscussion forum, here's the post in question.

I have never had any doubts the money was indeed confiscated. However I'm still hurting from the lies told in between. It's interesting to note that there are wheels in motion to take legal action and, in some quarters, not so legal action against both the guys involved in this.

My 2 cents....I'm not condemning nor condoning such action. We should all calm down and see how they perform in the next 3 months. In the meantime, keep our blades sharp.

DesertSky Marketing
Dustin announced that the program will be closing. The earlier members will still come away with some profits while the newer ones will be refunded. Here's his post on MMG.

I'm personally glad he has chosen to nip the problem in the bud before it grew. While there were sound reasons given in the post, I believe the lack of interest in the program showed. Since the referral contest was announced back on the 25th of Oct, the program has been unable to garner more than a 100 upgraded members. For a young program which promised so much, this was particularly damaging and disappointing. People just weren't interested. And it didn't help that people just weren't interested in promoting it due to low referral commissions.

Goes to show what type of people are currently residing in this 'industry'....the gamblers and the referral whores. Disgusting but true. Anyway time for this gambler to get off his preachy high horse and rest those eyes.

NSFG : Food For Thought

2006-11-03T00:03:00.000+08:00

I just received an email from Paul, and as expected, there was a drop of almost 70% of what's left in my account. Seeing that if I take the option to leave by the 15th of November, I'd only be left with 31% of my previous statement, I've chosen to stay. For better or for worse, that remains to be seen. In my book, if I'm going to lose 70% of my equity on a risk, it's as good as losing it all. Might as well make the best of a bad situation, but I also empathize with those who choose to leave.

Some (junk) food for thought:

- I can see why they chose to do what they did. The entire fiasco probably happened early in the year when they switched brokerage from ACM to FXCM. Had they announced it at that time, it would have spelt the death of the program at it's infancy. There would not be any managed accounts, from which the fees are crucial to recovery (more on that later).

- If they pulled it off, they would look like geniuses, but as we all know, they're currently looking like dunces.

- This comment was left by a reader, Harris, on the 19th of Oct, which I found to be useful and not widely discussed. I've taken the liberty to change some of the figures (hope you don't mind), with current ones from their latest update.

Given the next 3 months are used as a recovery period, I feel the lost amounts can be feasibly recovered, if they continue along the lines of the straight 5% gain they have been able to get.

Let's use a ballpark figure of 1 million. According to what I've read, only 10% of the funds are in the pooled accounts and of that half (70,000) have been lost.

So accordingly, $930,000 is effectively used in a trade. While 70,000 needs to be recovered.

If they manage to get 5%, that would mean 1.25% as a performance fee (or as the mail suggests towards the recovery). That's 1.25% * 930000 = 11,625 every month.

Multiple that by 4, you'd get $46,500 in 4 months. That's almost a full recovery by the end of January. (Note : or 6 months to achieve 69, 750)

That is assuming they make a flat 5% every month and no compounding. If there is compounding, which there will be, the recovery process would be faster.

- The above of course assumes that the managed accounts are indeed 90% of that of the pooled accounts and that NSFG is able to pull off 5% gains on a monthly basis. It also doesn't take into consideration of compounding, which Paul gives an indication he would do in the latest update.

- So effectively we should be looking at a 6 month timeline to recover, ceterus paribus.

- While I don't think they would pull off another stunt like the one they pulled off, but given the fact that they did, I wouldn't and can't put too much trust in them either.

- Last but not least, here's the latest update from NSFG:

Hello Everyone,

Okay well the month has ended and following this we have now worked out what the liquidity level on the Pool Fund currently is. That figure is 31.27%

What this means is that your statements will be altered to reflect the available balance of your account should you wish to request a withdrawal of your funds at this point.

What we will to do going forward is increase this balance till it gets back up to the September level through a combination of trading returns and the addition of our own funds derived from the company commissions etc each month.

You may request a withdrawal at any time as normal, as long as it is in line with your current available balance as per the statements I will be sending out each month as normal. I want to make it absolutely clear that if you choose to withdraw the balance of your account as it stands, it WILL close your Northsea Account.

Please remember that you will need to email: withdrawal@ns-fg.com for the withdrawal form. It will need to be submitted to me before the 15th of November. I will then remove the requested funds from the trading account and your withdrawal will be processed AROUND the 25th of the month. It takes time for the funds to move from the trading account to our company bank account, and then again onto the egold exchanger and then into our egold account, which is why I say around the 25th.

Let me reiterate again that the balance your statement shows is the available balance you have right now if you want to withdraw. As a significant amount of you have already told me that you do not wish to withdraw, you need to nothing and let us get your accounts back up. This is simply the easiest way for those that do want to withdraw to know exactly what they have in their accounts right now.

I will be sending out the statements shortly, if you have any questions in regards to these or anything else, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. Have a great week!

Yours,
Paul

NSFG : Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2006-10-28T00:50:00.000+08:00

Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there would be trouble,
If I stay it will be double,
So come on let me know.

Sorry, couldn't resist the song by Clash. Judging from the latest email from Paul of NSFG (which incidentally I didn't receive on time as usual), they are allowing us to withdraw whatever is remaining of our money or stay with them while they try to recover.

Suffice to say, it honestly doesn't leave me very much room to manoeuvre. If I leave, I only take about 30% of my equity back and have to write the other 70% off as losses. This is unacceptable to me since the bulk of my deposits shouldn't even be losses in the first place. So my initial reaction is to let them trade the amount back.

The silverlining here is that Ken is actually the type of trader I would leave my money with. How soon the recovery process will be remains to be seen. I'm not holding my breath here, just crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

Here's the email I didn't receive:

Good Morning everyone,

As you can no doubt imagine this last week has been a little hectic for me, I have enjoyed speaking with many of you personally over the phone and all the ideas that you guys have put forward.

Some of them are viable, some of them not so.

Some people have questioned the validity of our claim in respect to the seizure of the funds. To this end we are compiling the Case File along with the Bank Statements and Ken will be personally visiting one of the Forum Members, Cralle/cs65, who will independently verify the situation. I understand that they are going to be meeting this coming weekend and Cralle will no doubt post on the forums in respect to this meeting.

While a vast majority of you have given your support in what needs to be done over the coming months, one problem did occur over and over again, and that was in respect to the lock-in period we applied last week.

Taking these comments on board I have decided that choice is indeed important. No one likes to be told what to do, and especially told what they can not do! To this end then we are going to open up for withdrawals at the end of this month and give you guys the choice of what you want to do.

This will work in the following way. First of all we must establish what the liquidity % is at the end of the month so we know where we all are.

What I will then do is reflect this in your statements, the only way I have of doing this is by showing it as a trading loss. I want to emphasize at this point that we will return the fund to 100% liquidity and that this balance will purely show what your account is currently valued at should you choose to withdraw and close at this point.

If you do decide to take this amount now, it WILL close your account as there will be no more money in your account if you take it out now.

For example:

If your account currently stands at $100 and the liquidity % is determined to be 30%, your account statement will show a balance of $30.

You have the option now of withdrawing this money (or part thereof) or not.

If you choose to take all $30, it would close your account with the Northsea Pool.

I would like everyone to be 100% clear on this fact, by taking this action you now have the choice to do nothing and let your account grow back up to its correct level as per the end of September or withdraw now.

Interest will be added to your accounts each month to this lower balance as we resolve this issue. This means that the interest gains will allow us to build your accounts back up faster than we can by just adding our own money into the fund. The interest however will be added to the lower liquidity figure and NOT the end of September Balance. However you will retain the choice of being able to withdraw.

To summarize the above, the liquidity % will be determined at the end of the month. Your Month end statements will reflect this new figure and withdrawals will be opened as normal till the 15th of the month. Interest will be frozen on your account at the end of September account balance, but you will see your account balance grow each month as the interest and our own funds boost the pool back to its September Balance.

I would like to re-iterate here that the only reason we are showing you the balance that would be currently available is so you have the choice for yourselves to withdraw or not, and not be told that you can not by us.

We have complete and total confidence in getting back to the September Balances, it will cost Ken and I a great deal of our own money to do it, but we will get there!

Okay moving onto other news. We have been in the process these last few months of developing an auto-trading system that will work around the clock trading high-probability set-ups. We have worked out several set-ups which statistically have proven very effective. The problem with statistics is that you have to trade each and every set-up that comes along…fine when your awake and in front of the computer. However we needed something that would work for us while we are not there, and started development on such a project a while back.

We are now in the final testing phase of this system, and while there are still a few minor bugs it has performed very well for us. We will be using the next month or so to fine tune it and then go live with it. Data so far has been very encouraging and we are very excited by its prospects. It is unfortunate that this turn of events has happened right now as had this system been operational these last few months we would have returned some very good %’s and this problem would have resolved itself.

In my previous update I mentioned the fact that we would be separating the Pool Fund more directly from Northsea so that we can become FSA compliant. This will quite possibly be happening over the course of the next couple of months.

You will not actually notice a difference in anything in the first instance other than there being a website dedicated solely for the Pooled Fund or your statements coming from a different address. If it is logistically possible then the database may be placed online so you can view your account online as well as the monthly statements.

The other factor that you will notice is that the performance fee will be reduced. The exact level has yet to be determined, but until your balances are returned to their September level it is not something that you will be paying anyway.

That about wraps it up, as soon as know the exact liquidity % I will advise you all accordingly.

Yours,
Paul

Death of Autosufs?

2006-10-26T22:43:00.000+08:00

Well, things are not that gloom....yet, but judging from the way things are going and the number of new surfs appearing, it certainly looks like the end could very well be near. Just look at the autosurf and hyip whore capital on the net (MMG), and you'd realise in the past couple of weeks, the number of new traffic exchange programs has been dwindling. Not to mention, most of those new ones look terrible. There are no long term plans and seem like rush jobs with only one intention in mind, which is to run away with your money.

The 'industry' has been plagued by scammers and incompetent administrators since February, when StormPay pulled the plug. Ever since, the 'industry' has struggled to find an identity. The good old days of StudioTraffic, 4Daily and 12DailyPro are dead and probably buried. Many programs have since come, tried and gone.

What's more worrying is the lack of support from members. Any autosurf relies on cashflow to sustain payouts. Even the ones claiming to be legitimate or have outside sources of income suffer from this. Once membership stops growing and once money stops flowing in, the program dies. Yes, they are all ponzi in nature to some extent. After being burnt by StormPay, and subsequently all the other autosurfs who have either scammed or run by people in over their heads, members have become wary of spending their money in such programs.

As I've mentioned in previous entries, the hardcore group of autosurfers has fallen dramatically. In the golden age of autosurfs, a start up program can easily bring in 4-5k paying members in the first couple of weeks. But now, a program would do tremendously well to bring in 400-500 members in that same period of time (I know I'm exaggerating it a little, but you get my point).

Then there is the problem of sustaining that growth rate, and enticing members to continue increasing their upgrades with each subsequent cycle. There is so much mistrust in the industry, that even the most honest administrators are having trouble keeping members and their money in the programs.

Of course that being said, cream always rises to the top. Programs like 12by12daily seem to have a strong following and at this point of writing still seem strong, making me look like a fool. However I still stand by what I've written, 300 000 members is not a figure to be sneezed at.

There are also programs like DesertSky Marketing and CommandSurf, which have a steady following, and getting coporate sponsors. Just how long their growth can sustain remains to be seem.

Just as cream rises to the top, it also starts to ferment and stink if it stays for too long. Until something drastic happens to the industy to change the mindset of both, the people running the show (not those running away), and those participating, the future of autosurfing does indeed look bleak.

Positive Outlook from Wager Island

2006-10-23T05:50:00.000+08:00

After a couple of weeks being hidden in the thick fog of uncertainty (like the island King Kong resided in), the mist seems to clear a little giving some hope that Wager Island may yet be found on the map again. Word from the resident meteorological centre says that the mist should clear in the next 2-4 weeks.

UPDATE, Oct. 19, 2006

Wager Island has successfully located banking insitution(s) that we feel are safe, secure and reliable.

We are underway with our new financial structure and plan to have our accounts open and finalized within 2 - 4 weeks.

Our original banking institution, FCIB, is unfortunately closing under the pressure of a multi-billion dollar VAT scandal in Europe.
The good news is that we are negotiating the release of FCIB Wager Island funds to be wired into our new financial structure as soon as
our accounts are set-up.

We are also taking this opportunity to update our software and to add more games to Wager Island.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are here for the long term and would rather take extra time to get things right rather than rush to our re-opening. The due-diligence process that we must go through with new banking institutions is extensive for online-gaming enterprises and with the help of an international law firm are making each step sure and solid.

Thank you very much,

Wager Island

NSFG and DSM updates

2006-10-21T00:23:00.000+08:00

NSFG
Well, the NSFG folder in Golden Horizon has been locked and probably a good thing too. I found that it was spiralling out of control with silly posts that don't help the current situation. I'm still not pleased that I was lied to and hoodwinked into making a deposit in August under the assumption that everything was fine.

Let's hope whatever happened doesn't scare those with managed accounts away. They are essential in the recovery process.

Anyway here's the update in the locked forum. We can only hope and pray that everything works out as planned.

Hello everyone,

I have now completed all the returned deposits bar one guy who I am waiting bank info on to get their wire back over.

I have taken the decision to lock this forum as it is not serving a purpose other than for people to shout and vent, since I don't have the time to come here and review things and actually answer questions it just spirals out of control.

If you have questions email me, better yet do as many have done already and call me as I just don't have the time to come here and answer in person anymore.

The situation you have already all been made aware of and we have told you how we are going to combat this situation.

I have been speaking to a many people over the phone these last few days and one question that does come up quite a lot is how we can return the fund to 100% liquidity if it is only around 30% now as that will take a lot of effort to trade it back up.

And you would be correct, IF we were just trading it on its own. But we have not been. To increase the liquidity since this occured Ken and I have been putting our own money back into the pot obtained from the commission etc from the Managed Accounts along with our own trading account returns. This has personally cost us several hundred thousand already.....so it is quite frustrating when we have to do it all over again to boost it back up further.

It is a problem that will be resolved, not overnight, but it will get there because the additional amounts going into the account are NOT just from trading.

I have had literally hundreds and hundreds of emails saying that they are happy for us to do what is required to ensure the future life of the fund....and that IS my priortity.

Of course there are people who are not happy about the situation, and that is your right of course, but the situation is as it is because it is necessary right now and no matter how unpopular it makes us with some of you, we are still going to do it.

I am going to be honest and say that I have not had the time to read all the threads that were here, but several people have mentioned to me about the documentation concerning this event and providing proof.

We are currently getting all the case file together along with the Bank Statements. HOWEVER we are NOT going to be making these public.

The reason is this, other than making YOU certain that we are not just making this all up, what good will it actually do??......it won't do anything, it won't change anything, all it will do is prove we are not lying about it.

Under normal circumstances this would be more than enough, however I again have to think about the bigger picture. If we posted all the case information, a vast majority of you would read it and be satisfied. However there may be some amoung you who would want to take matters into your own hands and approach them directly yourself demanding your money back etc etc. If this were to happen then there would only be one result.

Ken would no doubt get into trouble and the pool fund as it stands right now would be instantly frozen and we would just clear the balances at this point to the level of the liquidity.....this is definately not something that we can allow to happen, especially when this is a problem that we are going to resolve.

This being said I can also see the need for you guys to know that we are not just making it all up in an elaborate plan to run off with the money. To this end we will be taking all the case files directly to some people offline.

One of the forum members here (Cralle & cs65) is actually from Denmark, and once Ken has Compiled the casefile and Bank Statements together he will be driving over to see him in person so that it can all be independently verified. Of course all the docs are in Danish, so it helps being able to read the language. We expect to get everything together sometime next week....but do NOT hold us to this as we need to wait on them providing us with all the details they are holding also.

There has also been some talk about allowing people to cash out now at the current level. This is something I have given some thought to, and right now I am not certain about it so I will give it more thought over the weekend. It is quite possible that we may do this, in a phased manner such as 10% per month or something like that....of course doing so would close your account down, but I will come back to that I think after this weekend.

That is really all I have to say to be honest, but I would be happy to speak with you should you have any questions.

I have outlined the problem, outlined how we are going to fix it and confirmed that we have the proof that we are not making it all up and are willing to disclose this independently so as to not make the situation worse.

Speak soon,

Paul

DesertSky Marketing
As you know, DSM has been down the past couple of days. It will be up on Saturday server time. Here's the update from Dustin. Paul and Ken can take a leaf out of his book on how to tell things as it is.

Wanted give everyone an update. The new server has been installed and
setup. Security has been put in place and the site files and database
has been restored. My latest off-line backup was at 11:58:58 PM on
Sunday, October 8th. I have a record of all upgrades and cashout requests
to date. Friday morning we will begin updating all accounts for
upgrade, earnings, and cashout transactions between Oct 9th - Oct 17th. We
feel confident that we will be able to complete these by early Saturday
(Oct. 21st).

Since our total down time will be about 3 1/2 days I will issue surf
holidays for Oct 17 - 20. Everyone must surf starting Saturday, October
21st!! If you don't surf, your upgrade will automatically be extended
by one day (you won't lose any earning potential).

Cashouts: Obviously we have missed the deadline for cashouts, so I
will accept cashouts made through 11:59:59 server time, Sunday Oct. 22nd.
All cashout requests made by Sunday will be paid on Wednesday, Oct
25th.

We have taken measures in our policies, procedures, and technologies to
make sure this disaster does not happen again. I have fired my
previous server manager for not following my specific requests/requirements
and cancelled my hosting with MegaByteHosting.com. I do NOT recommend
them to anyone.

Also, make sure you are using the correct web address for
DesertSkyMarketing. Our web address ends in dot NET. Do not use the dot com
address.

I do ask that you please vote at your favorite monitor site that
DesertSky Marketing has continued to pay their members even when we have had
zero access to our server. How many programs have done that or had the
off-line documentation to enable them to?

Important Note! Important Note! Important Note!

If you joined DesertSky Marketing between October 9th - October 17th
you need to join again. If you joined and then upgraded between those
dates, you will need to email me your OLD username and member ID AND your
NEW member ID so I can credit your account with your
upgrades/earnings/cashouts. I have records of all upgrades and cashout requests. If you
were already a member before October 9th, you have nothing to worry
about, we will get your account up to date by Saturday morning.

Thank you,

Dustin
DesertSky Marketing

More on NSFG and a Little on DesertSky Marketing

2006-10-19T11:09:00.000+08:00

NSFG
24hrs after reading the news from the forums (I've still not received the email yet), I'm still pretty darn disgusted with what's transpired. This program had the bulk of my online 'investments' and I was even in the process of making it a safe haven with a managed account.

HansG probably articulated certain parts what I feel the best in his blog entry, Paranoid Investing. Although I there were sections I didn't entirely agree with, this was what I felt echoed my feelings best, and I quote:

What bothers me most of all: I have invested additional sums of money in the last 3 months. Not only is that money now subject to the same restrictions (while not part of the problem), while we were all blissfully unaware of the problem, you allowed others to withdraw a 100% of their account in the last 3 months, while in fact there was only 30% available to them. This means that you were handing out MY money while you were keeping up appearances. You even had the balls to post excellent results!

Since I have a somewhat large amount in here, I have no choice but to wait the 3 months out to see if they are able to recover whatever is lost. Mind you, the bulk of my money was deposited in August and it just seems unfair that I'm paying for my loyalty to them.

DesertSky Marketing
If you're wondering what happened to DSM, here's an update on what's happening. I personally do not have any worries here. To add to that, payouts were also just made from withdrawals made on Friday.

Early Winter Hits NSFG

2006-10-18T07:58:00.000+08:00

Wow.....wow. This one hit like a ton of falling bricks. If you're a member of NSFG, you should have received an email from Paul with regards to what's happening. For some reason I haven't received the email yet and had to get the news from the forums, and quite frankly, the news totally floored me, especially since I recently put in a huge deposit in Aug.

I thought I had made some really smart decisions and had avoided some of the crap that has hit this industry, namely Rog's offer and FX Experts. Never in my wildest expectations that this would hit NSFG as well. I wish they had the honesty to inform us earlier, especially before I made that large spend here.

Perhaps it's just as well this came up at this time. I was in the process of setting up a managed account with their brokers, BGC Partners. I had arranged a meeting with my lawyers this Friday (20th Oct) to get my documents noterized. Well, at least I'm going to save up on the fees incurred here until NSFG has proven itself able to recover. Come to think of it, even if they do, the level of confidence has dropped dramatically. Their credibility has taken a huge hit in my books.

Well, to cut this whiny entry short, here's the email.

Hello Everyone,

What I am about to say I something that I had hoped we would avoid, however circumstances have dictated that we must take action now, and that action is not going to be popular for some of you.

I will start at the beginning, many of you may remember way back when we first started we were using ACM in Switzerland as the broker for our Pool Account, and then switched over to FXCM in February so we could run the Managed Accounts.

The problem started when we took our money out of ACM, because of their strict Anti Money Laundering Regulations the money had to be returned to the account which was on file held with them. The account in question at that time was our old Danish Corporate Account. The money withdrew from ACM without a problem, however as soon as it hit the Danish Account, the Danish Financial Authorities were all over it.

Ken was called in by the Ministry of Finance to prove what this money was, which we promptly did. However this did not satisfy them and they refused to release the money in the account to us for onward transportation. After taking legal advice it was clear that we were not going to be getting this money back and the Ministry of Finance went so far as to say that they are keeping this money so that they would not charge Kenneth with breaching Financial Law in Denmark for the handling of other people’s money. In short we had no option but to accept their token offer and move forward.

After this and following the deposit of all the money that was at the time held in E-gold and the Cyprus Bank Account we were at a position of being at 50% liquidity.

We had two options at this point, we could either immediately reduce everyone’s balance by 50% or trade back the difference through our own gains from trading to top the fund up. Obviously we choose the later.

We did in fact manage to successfully get the fund up to around 70-75% liquidity by putting our own money into the account from the trading returns…..and in hindsight it was here that we should have taken the measures that we now have no choice but to take. We did not however foresee the huge amount of withdrawals that would occur in the following months which have reduced us again to around 30% liquidity.

This is not a situation that can continue and to ensure that the fund remains liquid and here for the long term, we must take the following steps. These measures are probably not going to be popular with some of you, however they are required.

This is what we must do effective immediately.

1) Freeze all Balances as per the September Statements for the next 3 months
2) Suspend all Withdrawals – Pending and Future – for the next 3 months
3) Return all deposits made this month to their account of origin.

We are truly sorry if this does impact on you particularly if you have requested a withdraw in October, as the last thing that we wanted to do was cause people hardship. However we must do this for the long term stability of the fund for the coming years.

Many of you have already said to me that this is a necessary course of action and have understood the reasons for doing it. At the end of these three months we will be able to re-evaluate where we are again and look to move forward.

I would like to emphasize that if we do not take action now, then the entire fund could be in jeopardy of liquidizing over the course of a few months.

We are very truly sorry that we must do this, and are aware that this will tarnish our otherwise good reputation. The only good thing that we can say about this situation is that the trading has been good and we are not going anywhere, we have a substantial client base so we will get through this……we just wished we had jumped on it a little sooner than now!!

We are both very upset about having to do this, and aware that many of you will be disappointed in us getting to this position. I would like to thank many of you who are already aware of this and the understanding that you have shown.

This is costing us both personally a great deal of money as we have been depositing our own personal funds and trading commissions into the account to get the liquidity to a reasonable level, only for it to get back to this situation again. We however will continue to do this until this problem is resolved to the very best of our ability and use the coming months to get us back on track and moving forward.

In the years to come, this will just be a bump on the road, but it is one that we must cross now. After the 3 months have passed we will see where we are, until then Ken will continue to trade and we will be putting our own trading funds back into the fund to bolster it up.

I am sorry that I don’t have better news, and I am sorry if you have a pending withdrawal made this month.

Moving forward we had always planned to separate the Pool Account from Northsea more directly so that we could become FSA compliant and have already made investment into doing this. Over these three months we will further this goal so that the future will be far better for all and will keep you updated on the progress.

Yours,

Paul and Ken

General Scammer Alert

2006-10-12T22:42:00.000+08:00

Just a heads up. Looks like a serial scammer is back on the loose and threatening the already chaotic neighbourhood with yet another one of his fly by night schemes.

Click here to read more about this scammer.

The program in question : www.mfppro.com (My Financial Planner)

I'm not entirely certain this one is run by the same scammer, but whatever the case is, the program itself looks dodgy and filled with lies. Doesn't help that the mastermind behind it seems to be a charlatan, roping in some of the best referral whores out there in the forums to do his cheerleading.

However if you think you can play this game and get away with some profits, then by all means go ahead and do it. Afterall, one needs to take calculated risks in this arena.

Early Winter On Wager Island

2006-10-05T07:00:00.000+08:00

Looks like Wager Island has run into some problem with the bank they are using. The situation looks to be a temporary one. The game, in the meantime, has been frozen, which is ironic since the more lucrative parts of the island are spawned from a volcano. Anyway, here are the full details.

Wager Island's primary banking facility, First Curacao International Bank, has been closed by the Dutch Authorities. This has resulted in some delays in paying withdrawals over the past few weeks.

This has nothing to do with Wager Island, the bank has been closed in connection to VAT fraud taking place in Europe.

We are rushing to set up a new primary banking structure, but until then we will freeze the game.

Please due not be alarmed, we will update you regularly as to when we will open with our new banking structure in place.

To verify what we are saying is true, please click on the following links for news and articles regarding First Curacao International Bank.

https://www.firstcuracao.com/eb/main.html?id=101
http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/content/3392.asp?men=2&sub=1
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1870073,00.html
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=143113
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22092006/325/vat-fraud-nets-8-5-bln-pounds-report.html
http://www.ipt.cc/news/newsstory.aspx?story=992
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=6&debateId=28&articleId=3934

We apologize for the inconvenience.

NSFG : September Returns

2006-09-30T02:58:00.000+08:00

It's been announced that NSFG brought in 5% this month, that means after the performance fees, it's 3.75% for me. While not exactly stellar, it seems we're finally seeing some much needed consistancy since moving over to the new brokers.

I'm very comfortable here and now entertaining thoughts of reviving my initial plans of setting up a managed account, despite the fees I have to pay my lawyers to get it done. It's definitely giving better returns than my non-performing units trusts and surely better than keeping my money in the bank.

Short Update

2006-09-29T18:14:00.000+08:00

Update : Looks like the site is back. My views on it still haven't changed since.

Just a short update on a local exchanger. JR Exchange seems to be unaccessible at this point of typing this entry. I'm abit leery of it since I have some doubts over it.

Anyway, Singaporeans still have alot of other choices purchasing e-gold from the other local exchangers.

Desert Sky Marketing Signups Enabled

2006-09-28T01:33:00.000+08:00

In the event anyone wants to know, signups have been enabled for Desert Sky Marketing.

Good morning!

Our script testing is complete and everything is working with the exception of purchasing a Raffle Ticket via a payment processor (this should be resolved by tomorrow). You may, however, purchase a Raffle Ticket with your cash balance (this actually saves you the processor fee!).

Cashout requests made by Friday, September 22nd have been completed. Please remember you must request a cashout by Fridays in order to be paid on Wednesdays.

Members who do not activate their account by midnight of the day they sign up will automatically be deleted by the script. Free members who have never upgraded are automatically deleted by the script after 14 days.

Don't forget to use our support system for account issues: http://desertskynetwork.helpserve.com

Don't forget to register in our forum: http://www.desertskyforum.net

DesertSky Marketing is now open for new members! Please note new member sign-ups may be disabled in the future in order to control growth.

Thank you for your continued support!

Dustin Fennell
DesertSky Marketing

Desert Sky Marketing Updates

2006-09-26T16:08:00.000+08:00

Got this email from Dustin, the administrator here.

For those of you who are too lazy to read everything, here's the main highlights.

1. Signups are temporarily disabled.

2. Upgrades can only occur on weekdays. Upgrade button will be disabled for the weekend.

Every other thing here is gravy.

Each and every one of you have helped DesertSkyMarketing become a huge
success over our first few days! The response has been much more than
I could have asked for. At this time we have almost 350 members and we
are barely 72 hours old.

I am, at this time, going to disable new sign-ups. The reason I'm
doing this is very simple; I want to make sure everything is working
correctly. So far, there have only been a couple minor issues reported and
we are almost completed with the fixes. However, I would rather error
on the side of caution. As you can understand, if we discover an issue
it will be much easier to fix 350 accounts as apposed to fixing several
thousand accounts. Even though I've tested, and tested, and tested the
script; a test scenario is never truly like the real thing. Once I'm
100% confident every part of our script is running perfectly I will
enable new sign-ups.

I will disable new sign-ups from time to time in order to control our
growth. It is important that we don't grow too fast. Since I'm
actually entering into business ventures with the money that is coming in, I
must be able to manage it properly. If we grow too fast, that could
become very difficult. Please remember I'm not disabling sign-ups as some
marketing ploy. I'm simply doing it to ensure we remain successful for
a long period of time.

I'm also going to make one other change. Members will only be able to
upgrade Monday - Friday. I will disable upgrades on Friday afternoons
and re-enable them on Monday mornings. This too, is to protect our
program. This is mainly because we are accepting AlertPay as one of our
payment processors. I am unable to move any money from or to AlertPay
on the weekends. Also, several of my offsite business ventures only
take funds Monday - Friday. If I allow upgrades on the weekends it means
I am unable to put that money to work, but members will already be
earning daily %'s on that same money. I hope you can see this is a
fiscally responsible decision.

I understand the above two decisions are not your norm when it come to
surf programs. However, DesertSky Marketing id not your norm when it
comes to surf program either. If I were a ponzi would I ever disable
sign-ups and upgrades?

For those members who keep track of program growth using the Alexa
chart, I have added this to the "Monitoring" page on our web site for your
convenience. Also, for those members who keep track of program growth
via member IDs, you need to know the following information:

- Only pre-launch members have single and double-digit referral IDs.
(There are a couple triple-digit referral IDs because they requested
them.) There were 60 pre-launch members in all.

- I set the script so new members would start at 1001. This makes it
very easy for me to distinguish a pre-launch member from a post-launch
member.

- If you see the last member ID is 1800, that really means DesertSky
Marketing has 860 members. I don't want you to be off in your numbers.
:-)

Thank you, again, for making the first 72 hours of DesertSky Marketing
a huge success!

Dustin Fennell
DesertSky Marketing
Real People, Real Advertising, Real Profits!

Desert Sky Marketing

2006-09-23T15:16:00.000+08:00

Firstly this one's run by a well known figure in the so-called industry. I'm sure that's probably set everyone backpeddling...not another one. But before you do, I would suggest taking a look at it before you write it off.

The percentages are nothing to crow about. It pays a paltry 2.5% daily for 60 days, which is about 50% in 2 months. And the referral commissions are once again nothing to crow about too, offering a staggered rate of between 1-3.5%. It allows members to request payouts once a week, with a small staggered fee, depending on the amount you request. My suggestion here to save on fees is to request sparingly, but of course not everyone feels the same here.

However what makes this stand out is the amount of effort put forth to make it legitimate. The admin here is open to scrutiny, and in fact welcomes it. On the site itself are the scanned copies of company registration and other bits and pieces of information. You can also contact the admin by phone or skype.

The surfing here is unique as well. You need to view 50 sites to get your commission. The first 20 are manually registered while the remaining 30 are autosurf. It's the first hybrid surf that I know of so far in everything I've encountered.

On the whole, I take everything in at face value with a pinch of salt. It's a good attempt to bring back the longer term surfs. And from everything I've read, the most important thing is the leap of faith in the people running the show here.

Here are the statics at a glance

2.5% daily
$10 per advertising package
$1-$10 upgrade fee
Upgrades last 60 days
50 sites to earn 9%
1-3.5% referral commission (only for upgraded members)
$1-$10 withdrawal fee
Maximum upgrade $10000
Payouts weekly upon request (must request by Friday 2359 server time for payout on Wednesdays)

If you're interested please use the links below.

No referral link
My link

Midas Goes From Bad to Worse

2006-09-21T23:01:00.000+08:00

Talk bout digging a larger hole to bury oneself in. I got this update from the admin of Midas-Surf.

I did several payouts and will resume more later as I am exhausted and
must retreat to bed. I wanted to announce that any fast track payout
that is late will be receiving their fee back. Please email
support@midas-surf.com your userid, and FT payout date. This will help
us expedite the process as we can have a list to check off as we catch
up. I apologize for falling behind. I want to make it right to all
members. The best way I know to this is to give away free money. Here is
the deal: Every 100 dollars gets you a free $40 upgrade and every $1000
gets you a free $100 upgrade. If you max out at $5000 then we will add
enough to your total to cover the fee removed (2% for e-gold and 4% for
AlertPay) to get you the full 5000 amount to surf with. The remainder
of bonus money will be sent to you in your processor account you
upgraded with. With that said I bid for goodnight at 6:18 AM EST -5GMT.

Right, payouts have been made......to random members. There doesn't seem to be a system to the payments. The first in line are not paid and the cries are growing louder. Already numerous forums have downgraded the program as non-paying.

What makes things worst here is the admin is promising additional money for upgrades. Let me see if we can make some sense out of this.....for every $100 upgrade, you get a $40 free upgrade. And for every $1000 upgrade, you get $100 free. Logically this doesn't make any sense at all. Ok, so why would I want to upgrade $1000 to get $100 free if I can upgrade $900 and get $360 free? Moreover where is that money going to come from?

The admin must be getting really desperate here. I think it's obvious the program has run into cashflow problems. He must think we're idiots to fall for it.

Conclusion, move along folks, there's nothing left to see here. The program's as good as dead. In the unlikely event there isn't a cashflow problem, the bad press would be enough to send this one spiraling downwards.

Midas Loses It's Golden Touch

2006-09-20T12:24:00.000+08:00

Nope, it's not down and out yet, but the signs are not looking good. Payouts have been delayed and late due to numerous excuses. The latest I've heard is that payouts have been made sporadically to random members.

I suppose this is a classic case of an admin who is clueless on how to run a surf program. Despite all the good stuff going around in blogs and the forums, he still managed to screw it up. Don't get me wrong, the program is by no means dead yet, but it's surely going to struggle given the bad press all around. Even if it catches up on payment, I'm sure many supporters would be quietly pulling their money out.

I'm not going to continue with my tirade here, instead let's dwell on the mistakes here.

1. Pushing the ToS 7 business day limits. The program pays out on exactly the 7th business day, giving itself no lead time in case anything goes wrong. Personally I found this to be a very bad business model. The 7 business day payout deadline is meant to give the admin lead time in case membership grows and not to hold on to cash on hand.

2. This in turn reduces the ROI drastically. Any fool with more than 2 brain cells can see this. Once the norm of paying on the 7th day was established, people started looking elsewhere. I've not seen many big 4 digit spends after the first couple of cycles.

3. Changing course midway. The sudden implementation of the 50/50 rule also probably scared alot of potential upgraders here. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Unless of course there were already cracks appearing despite the protestations of the admin.

4. The inability of the admin to mix personal time with business. This is probably the most crucial aspect of things being the way they are...or at least to me. I understand that personal time is important. I know, coz I value mine very much. But to mix personal time with business is a strict no-no. If it's a planned holiday you're taking, then make sure you pay up in advance before you go on your holiday. Breaking the ToS because of a planned vacation is stupidity at it's highest. You know your holiday is going to eat into a business day (ie paying day), then anticipate the members who need to be paid, and jolly well pay them in advance. Instead what has happened is that there is a whole bunch of members who have not been paid according to the ToS, and who can blame them for screaming 'Scam'?

In short this one's going down the drain fast. Of course for the sake of my minimal spends in here, I hope they recover, but right now it seems they are clinging on to the life support.

I've also removed them from this blog. Even if Midas recovers it's golden touch, the damage has been done.

Staying Away For Now

2006-09-12T13:03:00.000+08:00

Autosurfs
Looks like the entire so-called industry is going down the proverbial drain. In between my previous post and this one, a couple of heavily pimped sites have fallen. I'm not going to dwell on the lame excuses used. These sites were expected to last at least a few more cycles, or that's what some if not most of the more popular blogs pimping them were expecting.

I'm not surprised most of them have closed shop earlier than anticipated. I mean, how else are the scammers going to make money if everyone pulls out their money. They've got to be one step ahead of us. The only way for us to beat the system is to stay one step in front.

Unfortunately, some of us have big mouths and larger keyboards. When we spell out our strategies, we give them a clue what to expect and when to expect it. I'm guilty of that as well, which is why I do not recommend programs on my blog, unless I think the program can run for some significant time. No point introducing some program which I am doing a hit and run on.

So far I've not been badly hit by the recent demise of these popular programs. I've pulled out most, if not all, my funds from them. Unless there is a significant change in the way autosurfs are run (and I'm not talking bout variations of the 50/50 rule), I'm moving away from them. There is still money to be made here, but the risk/return ratio is no longer suitable for a conservative player like me.

Good luck to all those still involved here.

Forex Investments
I stated, probably a month or so back, that there were a couple of programs that looked good and a few readers have mailed me asking about them. I'm thankful that I took my time to monitor their performance. The returns have been dismal at best so far. Most of them looked like they are using our money to test out their strategies in the forex market. Unless there is a turn around in performance or more substantial DD, NSFG would still be the only one I'd have in my blog (and it's closed to new members unless you can fork out 25k).

New Local Exchanger
Yet another local exchanger makes an appearance online. Someone mailed me to bring it up, so here it is. I've included it in the related entry.

New Local Exchanger

2006-09-07T23:42:00.000+08:00

New Local Exchanger
There's a new local exchanger on the block. I've updated the related entry.

AutoSurfs
After 2 months of glowing returns, it finally hit me on the butt. Two programs went down before I had the chance to take profits. One went down before the end of the first cycle, while the other decided to run on the second. Good thing here is that I didn't lose much, but I hate losing all the same.

Autosurfs are now becoming a hit and miss thing, much like the way Hyips have become. In the not too distant past, an autosurf run on a dedicated server and heavily advertised would run at least a couple of cycles, but now things have changed. Too many players have adopted the 'hit and run' method of playing these games, while too many administrators/scammers have gone one up and started to play the 'run and run' game.

Personally, I prefer sites which do not spend too much on heavy advertising. Sites which spend wildly on advertising seem to have an agenda of raking in as much money as possible in the quickest possible time. I also tend to stay away from sites which are heavily recommended by the more popular blogs. Too much of something might not always be a good thing.

It's down to personal preferences, but I prefer a low profile site which pays. The more honest administrators tend to work with a shoestring budget, aimed at paying members instead of going with the flashy.

Ultimately, luck plays a huge part of how you win in this game. This September should be an interesting month for me. If all my wagers pay off, I should be well in the black despite the 2 that ran away. Let's hope luck smiles in my direction.

Midas-Surf
Midas has implemented the 50/50 rule. While I understand the rationale in placing this rule to curb the 'hit and runners' like myself, I'm not a fan of it. It gives the pseudo impression of increasing the lifespan of a program, when all it actually does is reduce the ROI in the program.

To me, what fundamentally increases the lifespan of the program is based on 2 factors, the amount of money coming in, and when the administrator decides to pull the plug. Thankfully here, the latter is pretty much reduced by the openness of the administrator and the way the ship is run.

I've pulled most of my working capital out of this program, but still have a upgrade which I would continue putting in just to keep an interest here. I am curious to see how far this one can go and how long before it eventually bellies up.

E-gold Drama II

2006-08-31T06:54:00.000+08:00

Well, looks like everything's finally stablised. I would suggest to anyone making spends in e-gold to check out the exchange rate before doing so, just as a precaution that the malady strikes when you least expect it.

I hope things go back to normal. I have a huge spend in NSFG's account and the last thing I need is to have the amount delayed from going into the trading account.

E-gold Drama

2006-08-31T05:21:00.000+08:00

Update : Wow, just as soon as I typed this entry, my e-gold account went down to half again. Talk about jinxing it. With this rollercoaster ride, the rest of today should be interesting to say the least.

For about half an hour, e-gold turned on its head, with the price of gold dropping down to around $319/oz from $619/oz, effectively halving everyone's e-gold account. Of course as with all things related to e-gold, the glitches were fixed.

Unfortunately in this half hour span, spends and payments were still made. Judging from e-gold's past, these would probably stand. So anyone receiving money during the period of the glitch stood to gain twice the amount they were supposed to receive and anyone making spends, well..... got the short straw. Whether or not e-gold does anything about it remains to be seen.

What's more important is that normal operations are restored. Thankfully this glitch only lasted about 30 mins, and possibly only minimal damage done. Let's hope it doesn't reoccur again.

NSFG Moves to the Top of My List

2006-08-29T17:48:00.000+08:00

NSFG
NSFG has officially become my largest online investment. I've wanted to open a managed account, but after checking with my cousin, who's a lawyer, the fees involve in getting my documents ready would be a killer. Hence I decided to invest a smaller amount via the pool. With returns averaging between 3-5% monthly, it's a good long term investment. Moreover with the gentlemen at the helm, I feel that there isn't much of a risk involved.

The returns for the month of August have been updated.

Midas Surf
I've just gotten paid for an upgrade which expired on the 18th. Can't say I'm overly impressed with this one here. If you do not use the fast track option, they really take their own sweet time, paying you exactly on the 7th business day of expiry. I wonder how they would cope as membership gets larger. There is no leeway for extending payments unless they change their terms (which is usually the surf killer).

While I'm sure Midas will continue to have a long shelf life, I'm only going to play with profits here. Not so much a lack of confidence, just generally not a very happy camper. Not to mention, my pet grouse here.....it's so damn troublesome with the e-crypto card, especially if you have butter fingers like me, typing the wrong email address.

Not Dead Yet

2006-08-22T02:06:00.000+08:00

In case anyone is wondering, I'm not dead yet. I've just been rather busy with a couple of things that have happened in my life. One of which can be found here. My life's basically been flipped upside down by these little invaders. But that's not why you guys are here, so let's leave my life story out of this.

I've been dabbling with a selected few autosurfs and picking new ones to join every couple of days since my last post. I've been in and out from most of them, with only a few that actually look good enough for second helpings. Most have issues with keeping membership growing. Others have problems keeping existing members from leaving. The bottomline is that all the issues stem from the lack of new money coming in.

On the flip side, there is also the problem of having too much money coming in at the same time after the first payouts. This usually scares the shit outta me. I don't like to immediately 'reinvest' my payouts, preferring to wait a day or two to see how much the sites grows from the frenzy referral whoring that goes on. If the response is overwhelming, you run the risk of the owner getting greedy and making a run for it.

There is no safe way to play this game. It's all based on intuition, experience and most of the time, luck (so far she hasn't deserted me yet). The best way to play it, if you don't have the heart for such things, is to stay away....far away.

EPaySurf
No surprise here that this one's finally bitten the dust. Let's hope it stays dead. Kent's updates have been absolutely awful, just stringing anyone foolish enough to believe his dibble.

Midas-Surf
It took awhile, but I've finally finished 15 days of surfing here and am waiting for payment. I don't expect to be paid in the first 3 business days as those are reserved for the 'fast track' payouts. You pay a premium, you get paid first. I'll just wait along patiently with everyone else.

There's also a silly rumour going on about ID verifications that's needed for payouts to occur. As far as I've checked, there's no such plan. I don't know how it started, or how it originated from. From what I know, ID verification is asked if you lose your e-crypto card. How you lose such an important thing or why your ID is needed baffles me....on both counts.

In anycase, stupidity (which never leaves this industry) seems to have taken over and some quarters are already packing their bags. While I'm sure this site should last at least another couple of months, it doesn't harm anyone to be safe than sorry.

Midas Surf (Manual Surf)

2006-08-04T06:15:00.000+08:00

The first things you'd notice when you sign up here is the level of emphasis placed on security. Whether this are just superficial security measures that are seen on the surface or not remains to be seen. But what can't be discounted is the amount of effort to put a good show of it and to integrate it with the autosurf script.

They have IP protection here, somewhat like the kind e-gold has. You can set your security to a high level which would probably even keep you out if you use a dynamic ip. I have no intention to test it out personally.

The other distinguishing feature here is the use of an e-crypto card. You'd probably need to print it out, coz you'd need it with you when you log into your account here. While this is a huge security measure, well and above what I've seen in an autosurf, it's also troublesome as hell, especially if you log in and out of the program frequently. I suppose it's a small price to pay for the additional security.

As for the program itself, it's a manual surf that pays 9% for 15 days. The profits here aren't exactly 35% coz there's also a small 2% (e-gold) - 4% (alertpay) fee upon deposit, which works out to roughly 29%-32%.

Payments terms are the industrial standard of 7 business days upon expiry. For the impatient, you can opt for a fast track payout which pays in 3 business days, but with a hefty 15% administration fee. In both instances, payouts will only occur if there is a minimum of 2 upgrade units running.

To top it off, they are holding a conference call every Thursday 9pm est.

Seems like plenty of thought has been given to creating this program and should last sometime. I've been nothing but impressed. However, that being said, it would be prudent to exercise caution here. We all know what happened to King Midas eventually. While he was rich, it didn't make him happy.

I shan't bore you with anymore wordy details or thoughts, so here are the basic statistics:

9% daily
$5 per advertising package
$10 minimum purchase
2% upgrade fee
Upgrades last 15 days
15 sites to earn 9%
1-5% referral commission (only for upgraded members)
No withdrawal fees
Maximum upgrade $5000
Payouts upon expiry (must have minimum 2 unit upgrade running)

If you're interested, please use the link below.

No referral link
My link

Bits and Pieces

2006-08-04T05:18:00.000+08:00

12by12daily
Well, I got a hefty payout a couple of days back. I don't know if I should be happy or sad here. I believe there are alot of people who played this one like I did, and that is to put a $6 upgrade to get our money out of here asap. After all the problems with the script, server and payout issues, I'm not risking going back in until things show signs of stablizing.

David has always stood out as one of the most honest administrators in this industry, and that should never be in doubt. However the recent troubles have only shown that he has probably bitten more than he could chew, and is currently choking as a result of that.

I'd still be watching this one intently to see if there are any signs that might warrant another pop here.

EPaySurf
It's back. Or is it? Well, for what it's worth, I've been given a $110 upgrade here and I'm not complaining. If I get paid, I'd continue plowing some of it back into the program. I'm more interested in seeing how Kent get things back on the road after the goodwill and reputation here have been trampled upon and dragged thru the mud. I'm pretty sure plenty of knives are sharpened for the kill.

Either way, I'm not too worried, since I've not lost anything here. Just along for the ride....and that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Investment Programs
In recent weeks, I've joined some investment programs which I think could be worth a punt or two. These programs have given out pretty substantial DD that shouldn't be sneezed at. I'd probably introduce a couple of them in a week or two.

Just in case you think I'd be digging for more information about them....well, I'm not. I'm a small time investor without a clout following, hence it doesn't benefit me to dig too deep. So I'd make do with what's available.

Moreover, doing DD to me starts off with the program owner sending me a notarised copy of his identity. The Public Notary used must be registered with their national law society, so my lawyers can do a trace and verification. Only when such information is in (and both parties spending real money on lawyers), then the real work of DD should start. Unfortunately, I don't see this being done anywhere online with the more popular guys doing DD.

AutoSurfs
I dare say the industry seems to be picking up. There are some really fine programs out there and being a gambler, I simply couldn't resist. Just how long they would last is anyone's guess, but the amount of work done on these new surfs seem to suggest that they are here to stay long enough for one to make some serious money out of them.

I've joined about 4-5 in the last couple of days, spending some serious moola in a couple of them. Let's hope the gamble pays off.

Getting Started - Part 5

2006-07-28T07:42:00.000+08:00

Update : 20th July (Latest information)

Update : 15th December

Just thought I'd do a little write up on some of the local exchangers. Well, this section is actually meant for Singaporeans who are looking for a quick and safe way to exchange for e-gold. I've personally tried most of them, while the others come with a solid reputation.

The exchange rates given by these exchangers/companies are pretty competitive, so do scout around for the best rates. The service provided is usually prompt and polite. And probably most important for Singaporeans is that it is easy to make a purchase or out-exchange excess e-gold via internet banking. The convenience and the ability to stay anonymous is a major factor why most Singaporeans use local exchangers over their more recognised international counter-parts.

As a note of precaution, if you're exchanging large amounts of gold, it would be prudent to do so in batches of smaller amounts. Don't do everything at once. Always better to be safe than be sorry, even if the services mentioned come with glowing reputations.

Entelnova Global Service

This one's been around for eons and has a reputation solid as a rock. You can read about the company here. I love the fact they are a registered company with a real office address and a real phone number you can dial in.

I've personally not tried their service yet, but judging from the glowing testimonials, you probably can't go wrong with it.

SnapGold

SnapGold has been around since the beginning of this year. If you're making a purchase or a sale, it would be wise to do so when the operators are online, between 9pm -12am daily. The transactions are almost immediate in such instances.

If you can't get an operator online, you can still place an order and wait for the transaction to go thru. The wait shouldn't be more than 24hrs.

WynGold

I've been nothing but impressed with the couple of ladies running the show here. You place an order, and the transaction goes thru smoothly, usually within the hour, at ANYTIME of the day! They really live up to their motto of being there 24/7.

I tested out the system at 5am in the morning and received my e-gold by 6am. It probably should have been much quicker, but I had trouble on my side with the phone banking system. You can also speak to an operator via MSN, but judging from the service I received, the speed of the transaction and the time of the transaction, you really shouldn't need to use the live contact.

Bank2Gold

Another good service out there. It works almost exactly like SnapGold. If you get the live operator, the exchanges are instantaneous.

The operator is polite, and you shouldn't lose your way here. I certainly didn't.

Goldert

New kid on the block as far as Singaporean exchanges go. Well, they are not actually really that new. It's run by an old forumer, Apple. So far they do exchanges for Singaporean, Malaysians as well as interested parties from China.

The rates here are probably one of the best all around. Since their appearance, the other exchanges have been forced (whether by choice or competition) to reduce rates. Competition is always good for people like myself who constantly need e-gold.

However, the site doesn't have any chat options. While I doubt the exchanges would take too long, it sure would be more consumer friendly to have a live chat function that all the above exchangers have.

JR Exchange

Update : The site is back up. The rates have not changed since I've been introduced to this site. I'm frankly leery of it.

Another new kid on the block. The rates look good, but the plans look confusing at first glance. Well, to be honest I only took one glance at this one. The only reason why I put this one up was because someone mailed me about a successful exchange here.

A couple of things here that put me off. Firstly, there is live chat but I've never been able to get to anyone online. Secondly, popups, which don't think I need to elaborate more on it. Last but not least, needing to sign up before the real action starts.

While there are the negatives, the website does look pretty well designed and so far feedback has been positive (albeit only one so far). Let's hope there are improvements made in the near future. With their low rates, I might just do couple of exchanges here, when the time is right.

SgExchanger
New one. Worth a look if you're looking to buy or sell some e-gold. There's live chat via YIM or MSN. There's also a wide bank option.

The possible negative is they maybe using paypal.

ECurrenz
This one comes rather well recommended. The rates seems like one of the best in town. There's live chat via MSN.

The only downside is see is that while it's well supported with a bevy of local banks, the significant one missing is OCBC.

WARNING

Stay far far away from this company.

The Global Exchange

I doubt the company is in operation anymore, but no sense risking your money here when there are more trustable options. In any case if you're interested, you can read for yourself why this one is in the dumps.

Inviss - Not a Total Loss Here....Yet

2006-07-20T23:16:00.000+08:00

This was the latest post by Diana on MMG.

Hello People,

First of all i would like to appologise to everybody for the lack of comunication from the last days.

Now moving on to Inviss... Due to some tragic events in my life added with some of the best programs falling Inviss.com will shut down.

The reserve fund that we have will be used to build enough funds to cover the refunds for every member in this program. The time frame for that is yet unknown.

I take full responsability for the failure of inviss. Please do not blame Jve for that.

Diana

Refunds are good. The only problem is when they will arrive. We could very well be looking at another GottaLottaHits situation.

And speaking of GLH, they have offcially re-opened and I've still not received the other half of my refunds.

12by12daily, The New 12DailyPro? Not a Chance!

2006-07-18T17:42:00.000+08:00

This one's been taking the entire industry by storm, so I thought I ought to leave some comments on it. The entire concept of this one is closely and unashamedly based on one of the most successful autosurfs, 12dailypro. It's also run by long time DadNDave's administrator. Given David's reputation in the industry, it's no wonder the program started off with a bang. Even before the first cycle has concluded, the program has over 10,000 members.

That's like more than half the active autosurf community getting their feet wet with the program (and that's a very optimistic estimation). The only problem now is how to sustain such growth. Remember 12dp in it's heyday had over 300,000 members. Given the number of people who gamble with autosurfs, it'd be next week before everyone, who actively participates in such schemes, would already have joined the program.

12dp was able to bring people from outside the autosurf circle into the program based on 2 factors.

Firstly it was heavily advertised. It was not only advertised online, but more importantly offline as well, bringing in an entire new audience into the program. I have no doubts by payday, the same sort of frenzy would repeat itself in 12by12 (if it hasn't by now).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, 12dp's success was entirely attributed to the infamous pay processor, StormPay. Let's be honest, anyone coming into this industry is lazy. How else would anyone believe you can generate 56% (includes 12% commission), on top of capital, between 12-20 days for just surfing the net. Stormpay made it easy for people to use credit cards to upgrade. It was also easy to withdraw money from StormPay. It was a win-win situation for both 12dp and StormPay. Ironically, StormPay was also the cause of 12dp's demise.

So here lies the problem with 12by12. It solely uses e-gold. As everyone knows, or should know by now, e-gold is a pain in the ass to in-exchange and out-exchange. Unless you already are using e-gold, or really determined to believe the 56% hype, it's unlikely the frenzy would be as strong as that of 12dp.

So how long will 12by12 last? That's anyone's guess. It might not even survive the first round of payouts, or it might. But whatever the case is, it wouldn't come close to 12dp's level of success.

Emptying My Cupboard

2006-07-18T17:12:00.000+08:00

Inviss
I'm no longer recommending this anymore. Apparently the people involved in this one could very well turn into scammers. My support tickets have not been answered in over a week and the once active administrator(s) have both disappeared from the forums. While it's not a bona fide scam yet, the signs are not at all good. We've been down this path before and the chances of this one pulling thru is not good.

LilacUnicornAutoSurfing
With a heavy heart, I've remove this from my recommendation list as well. It has nothing to do with non-payments or the lack of support here. Laura has been a beacon of light amidst all the scammers populating this industry.

Unfortunately, I've had to drop this site because my account for some reason got totally messed up. I've lost over 15 referrals and my cash balance has been totally screwed up. Laura knows about this problem and so far has been unable to provide a quick solution.

Hence, I've had to remove this program. The program is still paying promptly.

Wager Island

2006-07-11T00:28:00.000+08:00

I've joined this game in May and have been enjoying myself for over a month. It's a virtual world where you can gamble and make (or lose) real money.

Ways to Make Money
- Virtual Real Estate
- Fantasy Stock Exchange
- Gold Hunt
- Lottery

Personally I prefer to go for the Gold Hunt and Real Estate options. The real estate game can be a fast paced earner, depending on where you risk your money. As for the gold hunt, it all boils down to plain dumb luck of flipping covered squares to see what it uncovers. So far I've been rather sucessful and am in profit for all my gold hunts.

The game also brings in other elements that influence the outcomes, depending on the options chosen by the active playing community. Options like voting for political parties can affect the stock market.

It doesn't stop there. Players can also engage (using real money) the resident fortune teller for tips or even a private investigator to dig up information. Of course the more money you use to engage their services, the more accurate the information received.

Before I go on further, here are a few press releases which I think should provide good reading.

Virtual Island Leased for 320,000 USD
Wager Island, Virtual Real Estate to Revolutionize Internet

If interested, please use the link below. Since this is a real gaming site with a legit gaming license and not some ponzi, I'd only be providing my referral link.

My Link

A Couple of Updates

2006-07-11T00:04:00.000+08:00

I've been rather lazy updating this blog, coz there's not much to update. Everything that's supposed to go smoothly is apparently going smoothly. In the past month or so, I've pulled out of a number of programs. Since the World Cup started, I've not been actively monitoring the forums, hence decided to take a backseat and not take any risks, which has worked out pretty well. While I've not made any losses, my profits have also not been significant. Well, being in positive territory is always good news.

NSFG
They managed to trade for the last week of June and reaped a sweet 3.63%. I've just recently received a statement in my mail which reflected the profit. As for managed accounts, I'll wait a couple of months for everything to settle before I attempt to sign up for one.

Inviss
I did abit of updating on my last entry and added a screen shot of the payment I received in late June.

LilacUnicornAutoSurfing

2006-06-30T07:49:00.000+08:00

I'll not bore you with another write up here. Just a link for your own reading on what I've written about the program in Febuary.

I'm reintroducing this program once again. Firstly, as a form of support to Laura Tylor, the administrator. And secondly, because I do believe with her level of determination and persistence, she will make this work. And last, but no least, after 6 months, I think her integrity should not even be in question. She has done what alot of other administrators have failed to do, and that is the ability to bounce back from setback, time and time again. What does not destroy her, only makes her stronger.

Screenshots of Payment

Jan 06
Mar 06
June 06

Here are the new statistics of the program:

No signup bonus
10% daily
$5 per upgrade
Upgrades last 13 days
20 sites to earn 10%
5% referral commission
Minimum payout $12
*Payout upon expiry (within 7 business days)
3% withdrawal fee
Maximum upgrade $1000

*On top of the above mentioned, in order to to receive payment, members will need to have a membership level of at least 25% of their cashout balance.

If interested, please use the links below.

No referral link
My link

LilacUnicorn Revival and Dropping Nowdollar

2006-06-30T07:36:00.000+08:00

LilacUnicornAutoSurfing

I have to say Laura seems to surprise me time and time again. There was a certain point in mid May when I thought she wouldn't pull this site thru. Not only has she done that, she's even made enough to revamp the script and redesign the site.

And these are not the only changes. Everything's changed here, including ROI and payout conditions.

Of course the best part of it all......I just got paid!

I've just reintroduced LUAS on my blog. She's simply amazing, and deserves all the support she's getting.

NowDollar

I'm withdrawing everything here and removing it from my blog. The reason is simple. I don't like the changes they are implimenting. Actually I don't like one of the changes, but that's enough reason for me to leave.

Here's the annoucement of that particular change in their forum:

However we will stop paying out to Egold after the Tuesday July 18th cashouts. This should give everyone that wants to continue with us a chance to get a Virtual Money card.

Starting July 19th we will accept upgrades with Egold but will not cash out to Egold. Any egold received we will simply convert over to Virtual Money.

Why are we doing this?....We are tired of the scammers and hackers we are having to deal with day in and day out associated with Egold. The fraud and problems that go on behind the scenes are more than you know. We are determined to keep your money safe and the site secure. Egold seems either unwilling or powerless to help us or some of the other legitimate surf sites with this problem. They are simply leaving us with no choice.
When you combine that with fluctuation in gold prices....well it is too risky a game to play with your money.

We hope you all understand why for the good of the program we must somewhat distance ourselves from Egold.

We are allowing enought time for everyone to get a VM card before we stop paying out to Egold. You can order a VM card right from the front of our website.

Jim

I'm not a firm supporter of VM. Or more accurately, I'm a firm support of e-gold despite it's frailties. VM does nothing for me except for incurring more fees. Anyway I'd just leave it at this, before the morbid Nowdollar crowd comes baying for my blood.

Inviss (Manual Surf)

2006-06-27T17:09:00.000+08:00

I have a good feeling on this one. The administrator is active on MMG. Wait...haven't all the administrators who frequent MMG have turned out to be dodgy lately? Truth be told, most of them have, and judging from the frequency everyone at MMG is becoming a surf administrator seems to suggest the trend continuing.

So what sets Inviss different from the rest of the scums? Quite frankly none of the 'facts' seem to suggest it would be any different. Call it intuition, if you may, but I have a good feeling that this one should last at least 4-5 months. Part of the reason is cause the daily percentage is low. In a sea of high percentage sites, it's refreshing to have someone open one which pays a relatively low percentage of 2-2.5% daily.

The other reason is the amount of time put into the script used here. While not perfect, the highly customised script suggests we're dealing with someone who is serious about running a surf program. Another thing I really like about it is the lack of advertising and monitors. Seems to suggest that the admin here doesn't really care bout new spends, which could in turn imply that it might not be a ponzi.

And what's really great bout the program is that it gives you $5 to start off. It's been a long time since any surf program is giving away free money to try it out. Even if you don't put any money in it, you can withdraw it. So besides time, there's really nothing to lose.

And if you upgrade and are unhappy, there's a 100% refund policy within 7 days of upgrading. So far, I haven't heard of anyone being unhappy to that extent yet.

Screenshots of Payment

June 06

Here's the stats

$5 signup bonus
2-2.5% daily
$10 per advertising package
Upgrades last 180 days
15 sites to earn 2-2.5%
5% referral commission (only for upgraded members)
Minimum payout $5
5 payout requests per month
No withdrawal fees
Maximum upgrade $5000

If you're interested, please use the link below.

No referral link
My link

'Hit and Run' vs Test Spends

2006-06-22T15:15:00.000+08:00

It's been sometime since I made any entries here. I've been rather busy with the World Cup during this period, trying to stay up till the wee hours of the day catching the games. Anyway I thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts on this, before I completely forget about it....again.

This has been a debate that's been raging in my mind for quite sometime, about which strategy to adopt when I want to make a spend in an autosurf. For anyone unsure what 'run and hit' and 'test spends' mean, I'd give a brief definition of both.

Hit and Run - Entering a program with a big sum and then pulling out after the first (or second) cycle.

Test Spend - As the name suggests, putting in a small sum and waiting for payment before committing a large sum.

Both methods have sound reasoning and merits behind them. Personally I prefer to use test spends on programs which perceivably have a longer shelf life. These are usually programs which pay a lower percentage and takes a longer time to recover your initial spend.

However since the demise of StormPay, the trend for autosurfs is to give a higher percentage and a shorter cycle period. Not to mention the number of sites mimicking the 12daily model which had proven itself so successful.

Since the turn of the year, I've been using the H&R method to devastating effect. I've been putting in anything from $100 to a princely sum of 4 digits and pulling out after the first cycle in most times. Of course there are a number of programs which deserve second helpings, but those are usually rare, and I try not to get (too) greedy. The other thing to note here is that I don't jump into any and every program using this method. I only do it when a program meets certain some criterias.

However since the end of May, this strategy seems to have lost it's effectiveness (at least for me). It seems the scammers have gotten, either smarter or the industry players have finally caught up. Of the last 3 H&R programs I've been involved in, I only managed to get my initial back in one of them (by the skin of my teeth), while suffering a total and complete loss in the other 2.

Perhaps I've been spending too much time on the World Cup, and not enough time on my 'homework'. Of course it's a convenient excuse to place the blame somewhere, but the bottomline is that I think the industry looks to be changing yet again. Unfortunately, I have no idea which direction or what the changes are. Only time will tell, what the future holds.

Note : The surf programs that I introduce here are those that I genuinely believe will last at least a few cycles. As and when I feel it no longer meets my criteria, I would remove them. I do not and will not introduce my H&R programs just to earn a few dollars. As mentioned in this blog numerous times, the money I make from a program is good enough, and referral commissions are just a bonus.

NowDollar (manual surf)

2006-06-16T08:24:00.000+08:00

Well, you can't keep a good dog down. I just had to get back into autosurfing, or in this case, a manual surf. As you probably should know by now that every one is promoting this program in some form or other, and they jolly well have a good reason to do so.

1. It's been running for over 3 months.
2. Recovered recently from a huge DDoS attack.
3. Recently forked out $5000 on Prolexic Anti DDoS. Check the whois details.
4. Lance appeared on AutoSurf Authority Monitor's newscast. Check in their news achives. Still have nothing good to say about monitors.

Personally this program looks good for a punt. Judging from the frenzy it's causing right now, chances are it should last a few cycles, enough time to take a profit from.

Here are the statistics of the site:

No signup bonus
9% daily
$10 per advertising package
Upgrades last 15 days
12 sites to earn 9%
5% referral commission
Minimum payout $35
1 payout request per week (paying on Tuesdays and Fridays)
4% fee on deposit
No withdrawal fees
Maximum upgrade $7000

If interested, please use the links below.

No referral link
My link

Lunar Surfing goes Loony

2006-06-15T20:00:00.000+08:00

There have been changes at Lunar Surfing in the past week that seem to contradict one another.

Firstly, they reduced the payout minimum to $10 from $15. This was a good move since people with one unit would probably have never been able to withdraw their $12.6 at the end of one cycle. It was a move that made sense.

Then they went to spoil it all by reducing upgrade units to $5 per upgrade instead of the usual $10. Now we're back to square one. If someone upgrades one unit, chances are they would now not be able to withdraw their $6.3 after a full cycle. I'm sure after the administrator realise this, there's going to be changes to the minimum payout yet again.

I'm ok if changes are made to improve the program. But this is getting to a stage where it's getting a little bit anal. I'm seeing changes for the sake of changing, either to drum up interest or to create news. Changes are made without really putting thought into it.

It doesn't help that there is silly public bickering going on that's not doing the publicity of the program any good. While the program probably has some good potential to grow, there's too much going on for me to have any good vibes over it.

So I've removed them from my autosurf list, hence the cupboard is now bare. There doesn't seem to be any program worth recommending at the moment. Most of the programs I'm in are either too new, or I'm too uncomfortable to introduce. In short, none meet my criteria of a good program yet. The other factor is that I'm too pre-occupied with the World Cup to really look at the programs indept.

Gold Losing it's Glitter?

2006-06-14T02:12:00.000+08:00

Noticed that gold took a pounding and fell from over $600 to bout $560 in just one day. It's been falling steadily for the past week.

Well, what does this mean? Quite frankly, in the larger scheme of things, I don't know. But what I do know is that gold prices would affect the money held in e-gold. Since the fall in the past few weeks, many hyips and autosurfs would possibly go belly up in the next few days. Already in the past couple of days, certain big ones have already been knocked out.

If you already have money in the major hyips and autosurfs, chances are there's nothing really you can do about it. If the program is going to fall, it will. However if you're thinking of 'investing', my advice is not to do so at this point in time. Keep your money with you. Let the dust settle and see who or what is left standing.

Back to the Drawing Board

2006-06-10T23:41:00.000+08:00

So much for coming back from a Phuket trip rejuvenated. I've just been hit by a double whammy, just when I thought I had the game figured out and would be making sweet money from gambling on autosurfs programs.

eDatasurf
Ramesh just announced that the program will close indefinitely and I've just received a full refund. Made a slight loss in terms of the fees to e-gold with all the payouts. Unfortunately, since he's made a final decision, or at least an annoucement, there is no turning back from it. At least there would be full refunds for everyone who played the game here.

Sadly this program had alot of potential and would possibly rival some of the big boys out there, given the kind of support it has garnered and the good reputation earned. Of course at some point in time, it would have shut down for being the ponzi that it is.

The reasons given for the closure was to spend more time with the family and the so called attacks on his integrity (read here). While I do not deny that he has put in his heart and soul to the venture, however using this reason sounds to me like an excuse. For someone with a wealth of experience in this industry, he would and should have anticipated difficult questions coming at him. The moment he opened up a surf program, he opened himself up to to public scrutiny. Throwing in the towel instead of standing firm only goes to show that he had something to hide and took the moral high ground of giving full refunds. Of course I'm sure most would be taken in by his actions, while he continues life being a referral whore once again.

Personally he has lost all credibility.

Other Autosurfs
I've also been hit by a couple of gambles that went awry due to my trip. I thought I had it all figured out and started making gambles. The losses have not been significant, but it sure has dented my confidence greatly. Looks like I need to take some time off to reassess my philosophy. So far Lunar Surfing is possibly the only one which I am taking a serious pot shot at right now. I've already started pulling out my money from the other surf programs and moving them to other less risky, non-ponzi investments.

Looks like for the next month or so, the only gambling I'm going to do is with World Cup betting. Wish me luck.

Lunar Surfing

2006-06-10T05:26:00.000+08:00

Lunar Surfing is run by a couple of pretty known forumers in MMG. Unfortunately I do not know any of them personally nor have had any dealings with any of them. Given the way this one's been run for the first week or so, my gut feeling is that this program should be around for at least a couple of months before it goes belly up like all autosurfs.

Without further ado, here are the statistics of the site:

No signup bonus
9% daily
$5 upgrade
Upgrades last 14 days
14 sites to earn 9%
5% referral commission
Minimum payout $10
Payout requests are open on Fridays
No withdrawal fees
Maximum upgrade $5000

If interested, please use the links below.

No referral link
My link

The Next Wave?

2006-06-09T17:36:00.000+08:00

I've been gone for a few days and it seems to be that the autosurf industry might be in for a mini revival since StormPay ran through it. From what I've seen/read in the past couple of weeks, there seem to more and more autosurfs springing up, run by credible forumers in the industry. However one must still take it with a generous pinch of salt when using 'credible' and 'forumers'.

What's particular to me is that most of these programs seem to have started off with the right foot forward. Dedicated servers, precise payout plans, active administrator team and a steady stream of supporters. After a week of observing some of them, some actually do seem to know what they are doing, in terms of running the show as well as planning for growth. I've personally joined some of them and am waiting for a payout before I make a recommendation.

But we all know that such programs are ponzis. If you catch the wave at the right time, you'd be able to ride it. If you catch it at the wrong time, chances are you'd sink.

A couple of other updates

EPaySurf
What a mess. I've pretty much refrained myself from commenting on this too much, but what a fucking mess. The emails I get from Kent seem to border on insanity. Poor chap seems to have completely lost it. The excuses get weirder and weirder, the emails get more and more clueless. I wish he would just completely stop communicating and leave the rest of us who are sane alone before he infects us with his disillusions.

GottaLotta
As expected, the official launch was delayed. To be honest, if it had launched on time, it wouldn't have made much of an impact. If Christian is reading this, refunds come first. Why would anyone dabble with the new site if the company is still holding on the their money? I hope this is one common sense equation Christian works out before damaging the program (or his reputation) any further.

NSFG
Seems like they have switched brokers. Not much news here ever since their forum became read-only. Looks like my plans for a managed account will take a back seat. Need to monitor how their performance is with the new broker and need to know if the new broker offers managed accounts. Don't you just hate it when your plans get delayed?

Back from Phuket

2006-06-09T16:32:00.000+08:00

I'm back from a short trip to Phuket. It was a well deserved trip. I hadn't realised how much it rejuvenated me. I've actually spent the last few days sifting through the mails when I was away and catching up on the readings in the forums. There are a few comments I would like to make regarding some programs, as well as observations in general with regards to the entire autosurf industry.

However before I do all that boring and tedious stuff, I would like to just make a few recommendations if anyone is interested in taking a trip down to Phuket.

My Phuket Trip
If you're going to Phuket, chances are you'd probably want to do some of the island hopping day tours. You'd also probably read up on Phuket from Lonely Planet or some travel related website. I know I usually do that before any trip, just to find out what are the 'can't miss' things to do. Unfortunately in this case, I found out that such guides and websites were totally useless. The prices quoted and the quality provided were possibly jacked way too high. Possibly because most of these were written by Caucasians, and the chances of Caucasians being ripped off is exponentially higher.

If you're going island hopping, I would suggest booking with the Siam SeaCanoe company. They hold a wide range of tours, offering different destinations. The service is pretty good. I didn't get a chance to visit the much talked about Phi Phi island since one of the guys I was travelling with had been there before. Instead we opted for some cave canoeing and a visit to James Bond Island. I'm sure we probably lucked out with the crew we got. The crew was young, dynamic and entertaining. From everything I've read and heard, no one really comments on how great their crew for the island hopping trip was. All I've read was how beautiful the islands were.

The crew we had was fantastic. The service was impeccable and we were kept entertained all the while. They performed dances and on the journey back to the jetty, the entire boat was literally rocking with both the guests and the crew dancing/singing on board. I'm sure it was quite a spectacle for the guests on the other ferries that were coming into the docks together with us. All I know was that I was basking in the sweet gazes of envy in their eyes. When we finally docked, I know many of the guests and myself included, went to every one of the crew and shook their hands, thanking them for a wonderful time. It was really quite emotional, like parting with a group of old friends.

Unfortunately, getting the same crew is pretty much a touch and go thing. The name of the guy in charge of the crew is called Tommy aka Son of James Bond. Chances of getting this crazy bunch is possibly unlikely, but if you do happen to chance upon this crew, let them know that the group of guys from Singapore say hello.

As for booking the tours, I would suggest actually walking along the streets of Patong. There are plenty of dingy travel agents plying their wares. Don't be afraid to book your tours there. The prices are cheap and you can bargain. My tour costs 1200baht. If I had booked it online before even setting foot to Phuket, it would have cost up to 4000baht. Even the hotel endorsed tour agent quoted 2500baht for the exact same tour package.

The other thing I think you'd probably need to know is how cheap the seafood there is. Again if you visit the websites, most would recommend Patong Seafood Restaurant. The quality is pretty good, however the prices are well......pretty extreme for local standards. If you have time to do a bit of exploring, there is a stretch of open aired seafood restaurants along the road where FantaSea (famous theatre for tranvestite shows) is. The prices here can be up to a third of that in Patong Seafood Restaurant or any of the other established places, depending on what you order and how you bargain. Having sampled the food at both places, I personally couldn't tell the difference in quality, neither could anyone in our group. The food was equally fresh and a world cheaper.

That's bout all I feel one should know from my experience. Everything else is probably echoed in other websites, guides and forums. If you're planning to make a trip down to Phuket, have plenty of fun in the sun. I know I had a whale of a time. Just wished I had spent more days there to explore. Probably just as well that I didn't. Gives me the perfect excuse to visit the place again.

The Comeback Kids

2006-05-29T04:50:00.000+08:00

I'm about to leave for a short holiday and will be neglecting this blog for a week or 2. Meanwhile I'd like to dedicate this entry to the programs which have made a comeback from malicious attacks, or attempting to revive their fortunes.

LilacUnicornAutoSurfing
Looks like LUAS maybe staggering back. While I'm glad to see Laura slowly getting back to her feet, I have doubts the program maybe here for the long haul. Too much damage may have been done despite being run by an administrator with a strong-will and persistence.

This is one program I'm sincerely rooting for. The Stormpay fiasco couldn't have happened to a better natured administrator. I hope her determination sees her programs through this testing period.

eDatasurf
eDs faced a good long period of downtime the entire week. For most parts of the week, I was not able to load the site. However the worst seems to be over and for most members, the site's working like it hasn't lost a beat. From what I've seen, Ramesh has doing a tremendous job of not only keep members up to date, but also getting the job done by bringing the site back up.

And after all that's happen, payments were on the dot. I've already updated May's payments in the program entry.

EPaysurf
Okie, this one's pretty much bewildering for me. I've no idea what to expect here. It seems now that the program is back up and everything is running as per normal......well, except for the payments. Kent seems to have put on a determined front to continue running this, or run it to the ground, whichever fits the bill.

Well, what's best here is to see payments. Payments heals all wounds and bridges all divides. Until that happens, we're only going to see this one going one direction, and that's back from hole where it crawled up from.

GottaLottaHits
It's taken sometime, but finally it's been announced that the new version will be officially opened on the 1st of June. I'm glad that I'm at some beach in Phuket when that happens. I have no expectations here. I'm not even sure how it will work, even after reading up on the new program. Way too complicated and not enough explainations. I suppose all will be revealed in greater detail on the 1st, barring anymore delays.

Traffic Exchanges - Choosing the Right One

2006-05-23T03:58:00.000+08:00

Autosurfs and manual surfs are popping up faster than rabbits breed nowadays. It’s humanly impossible to join every one of them out there. Moreover, with the number of dubious characters out there trying to steal your money, it’s not advisable to contemplate joining every one.

There are a number of factors to consider before you make a conscious effort to put your money into one of these traffic exchanges. They are by no means exhaustive, and you should feel free to add any that you find will help you make an informed decision. No one point is more important than the other, no matter how I phrase them. It varies from individual to individual.

As a suggestion, you could also set weightages/scale to each of the points mentioned and do up a checklist to determine if you should part with your money on particular programs. However I’m not driven by numbers, but rather by intuition.

Based on my experience, these are some of the factors you should consider before upgrading.

Percentage Returns/Length of Upgrades
These 2 are co-related. The higher the daily percentage returns, the shorter the upgrades last. If both are considerably high, chances are that the program isn’t built to last very long. There’s a high chance such a program could possibly be a scam to lure the greedy.

Sustainability
Let me for the record state that most, if not all traffic exchanges that offer a fixed percentage returns do not last. Learn to calculate the REAL daily percentages of these programs. This should give you a good idea on how much a program is paying and how much you would be making in REAL profits a month. The calculation:

Daily percentage = Total payout percentage/Upgrade length

This of course doesn’t factor in any withdrawal fees. Withdrawal fees will reduce your
‘total payout percentage’. I’ve also conveniently left out the number of days before you get paid. This, in my opinion, is a variable number. The longer you continue with your upgrades the lesser the impact of that figure.

Withdrawal Fees
As mentioned above, this will cut into the total amount you receive, hence effectively reducing the amount you earn. Administrators like to implement this to give the impression that they have considered all the server and other miscellaneous fees.

In truth all these can and should be factored in when coming up with the daily percentages. If there are fees that need to be covered, reduce the daily percentage. But of course you would hardly see this happening. It creates the impression that the program is having problems, hence a withdrawal fee is introduced. Also keeping the daily percentages high gives the illusion that the program pays more.

Payout Requirements
This is particularly important in my decision making. Programs that payout daily, set themselves up for immediate failure. As a program grows, daily payouts become a logistical nightmare for the administrator. It also shows that the program is totally reliant on new members to payout the old. There is no lead time to gauge the amount of money required for payouts.

Delayed payouts on the other hand (be it a day or a week) works in 2 ways. Firstly it gives the illusion that money is used in some form and needs to be transferred to make payments. Secondly, it gives the illusion that the administrator has some form of money management. Both are better than the daily paying administrator.

Compounding
It's commonly acknowledged amongst players in the industry that if a program allows compounding, it would hamper it's longevity. I prefer to see it as a non-issue. Compounding occurs regardless of if the program allows it or not. Members who get paid will tend to 're-invest' or 're-purchase' upgrades.

Depending on the terms in which compounding is done, it can actually work towards your advantage. In most cases, compounding reduces the fees issued by payprocessors. I personally see it as good money management by the administrator. As for it shortening the life of a program, that actually all depends on withdrawals and upgrades. When total withdrawals are greater than total upgrades, the program crashes. Payout rules play a larger part than compounding here.

Server
Everyone who is serious about such programs should learn how to do a whois on the server the program is hosted on. This usually gives a very telling picture on how the program will perform in the near future and a bit about the administrator.

Here are a couple of websites that I use which provide good information

1. Domain Tools
2. Webhosting.info

The whois information shows the registrants particulars and should also show the number of websites hosted on that particular server. In most cases, the registrant particulars are not of paramount importance to me. To protect their own privacy, some administrators prefer to hide them, which I have no issue with, since I value my own privacy very much.

As for reverse ips (showing the number of websites), it basically tells you if a program is prepared for growth. The more websites hosted on the server, the smaller the bandwidth allocated to the program. A traffic exchange would require a large bandwidth. Looking up the websites on the reverse ip data would also allow you to see if any other traffic exchange is hosted on the server as well. The more isn't the merrier here.

A well planned program would usually prime itself for growth. The more serious administrators would pay more for a dedicated server. This means that the only website hosted on the server is the program itself.

On the other hand, some owners prefer to upgrade their bandwidth and servers as and when the situation requires it. As long as the administrator is able to pre-empt the needs, it should be fine. If done smoothly, it would save the administrator additional costs. However, from experience, this is often hard to do, and most fail miserably in this aspect.

FAQ and Terms
Read and read again before you join any site. Read and read again before you upgrade. Know the rules and requirements. Knowledge is your best weapon. I often see people in forums complaining bout things that have already been written in the Terms of Service (ToS). If they had spent a little time reading, most of these complaints would have been answered adequately.

The other thing here is while reading the ToS, see if it's original. If the ToS has been copied from elsewhere (which is very rampant), chances are the administrator here is out for a quick buck. It also shows that there is nothing really unique about the site that will draw new members. A program that can't attract new members is probably doomed to failure. A serious administrator will have a unique ToS to make his program stand out from the myriad of surf programs.

I personally tend to go into detail when it comes to a program's FAQ and Terms. It's usually a major part of my decision making.

Design and Script
The script and design tells alot about an auto or manual surf. The design basically tells you how much has been invested in the site. A good design attracts new members to sign up. That would at least give the program a chance to take off. Barring the administrator being an outfront scammer right from the off, you'd have a higher chance to profit from the program.

Same goes with the scripts used. Unfortunately most of the scripts used is a generic script that's been heavily modified. The things we can do when we join a program is to give the script a test. We can't test it as hard as the administrator, hence we can only hope the modifications are not buggy. One huge problem with new modifications is that administrators rush to get them online without the proper testing. This rises problems in the later life of the program, usually occuring on the first payouts. In my opinion, such programs are best avoided. If you have to join, do so with a test spend. An administrator who doesn't test his script rigoriously isn't going to be serious with your money. The only thing he's serious with is lining his pockets.

Program Lifespan
As everyone should already know, this is a gamble and timing is everything. You play for profits, hence you would want to choose to enter when it’s profitable. Going in at an appropriate time is essential. You wouldn’t want to enter when the program is already on a decline, chances are that you’d be losing your money. You also wouldn’t want to be throwing in a large some of money right from the beginning only to have the administrator turn into a scammer.

Knowing when the program has started and gauging for yourself when to enter is an art by itself. Unfortunately I don’t really have any words of wisdom here. As a general rule of thumb, I don’t join programs that have already been running for over a fortnight. I don’t mind missing the train. Another one will always come along.

Traffic
From what I’ve read, most of the more experienced players in this arena tend to base a lot of a program’s future success on the Alexa chart. It basically shows the amount of traffic that is generated by a website over a certain period of time. I’m bewildered how others translate that to the future of a program.

To me it merely shows that the program is currently doing well. There is no guarantee that the site will still be standing tomorrow. So don’t be fooled by people trying to show you how successful a site is.

Administrator
Administrators play a very prominent role in the success or failure of a program, and your wallet. How quick a ticket is responded to, how fast he is to make payouts, how visible he is in forums all play a part in instilling confidence in his members.

Generally, the more active the administrator is, the more successful the program is. A traffic exchange requires a more personal touch than a hyip. It also requires more babysitting to ensure smooth operations.

Sometimes, well established names in the forums also step up to the plate to run programs themselves. Why in the world would they put their hard earned reputations on the line is beyond me. I find the hard work and the heartaches not worth the hassle. Of course I leave you to make heads or tails out of it.

Lemmings
This should actually read as ‘Cheerleaders’, but I prefer using ‘Lemmings’. Somehow I always imagine those who need to post whore or signature whore in forums particularly amusing. When a program is up, they would cheerlead, posting useless material that doesn’t benefit anyone except to show their signature or increase their post count. However then a program fails (which eventually all do, albeit in different forms), they would be the first to curse, swear and bitch at the administrator, who probably was the Exalted One just a week ago.

Anyway the point I’m trying to make is not to be swayed by the general cheerleading that goes on in forums, websites and blogs. You have the tools to make an informed decision, or at least a semi-informed decision and you should use them. Joining because everyone else does makes you a lemming. And you should know what lemmings do, when one jumps off the cliff, they all do. They are driven by the herd mentality. Don’t let the herd sway you, make your own decisions.

Documentation
There is a growing trend of programs to show their company registration and other related company documentation. Unfortunately, I’m a sceptic. If a program needs to provide any form of legitimacy, the best way to do it is to show a government issued document and the owner’s passport that are notarised by a notary public. Anything less is just another form of giving false security.

Conclusion
In conclusion, learn to choose the programs you want to be involved in. I’m sure there are other factors to consider, but until I think of them (or email me if you have any), please use a large dose of common sense when you decide to gamble. Hopefully it’s been as helpful to you as it is for me.

EpaySurf Shuts Down

2006-05-21T18:01:00.000+08:00

Bah. This leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Good thing is that I'm in overall profits here. I recovered my capital from both programs asap and basically played with profits after the first month.

More details of the closure can be found in the MMG related threads or here.

The good news, if it comes is that there would be refunds on upgrades that were not paid out. As for the integrity of the administrator, Kent Black, I leave you to decide for yourselves. I do not hold an animosity towards him, since I've always treated this as a gamble and came out none the worse for it.

Traffic Exchanges - BlackBox Approach

2006-05-19T15:28:00.000+08:00

Most, if not all, autosurfs which promote a fixed percentage income are unsustainable in the long run. Few are able to provide genuine transparency on how and what they do with your money. Most are ponzis and rely on new money or growth to sustain the payouts.

The trend now is for autosurfs to give a high percentage and a shorter expiry date on upgrades, thus making it faster for one to regain your capital. This also accelerates the demise of the program. In general most, of these high paying programs are unble to sustain longer than 3-4 months. Of course 12DailyPro was the rare exceptions.

I've mentioned in this blog over and over again that these programs are gambles, at best money games that people play. Hence it is often parroted in the online community that one should only gamble whatever you can afford to lose. Some play it sucessfully, most don't.

As for doing DD, I only save it for those programs which are willing to show transparency and genuinely able to provide real proof of trading. However even in such cases, scams are rampant and false information is often provided by these online charlatans to fool even the most experienced people in the industry.

The BlackBox Approach
I personally use what I term as the blackbox approach when I 'invest' or gamble online. That means I 'invest' in a program and wait for my returns. I'm not interested to know what happens to the money invested and only interested in what I take out. In essence, this is how it works:

Money invested ------> BlackBox ------> Profits

DD is unnecessary, since most of these programs do not stand the test of time. By the time you do a conclusive DD, you'd know that either the program has already fallen by the wayside or you've convinced yourself not to play.

To make things simple, you base it on your intuition and risk analysis. Timing the market will enable you to profit. And that is if you're lucky enough to meet an administrator who doesn't have the intention to run away with the money in the first place.

Trouble in Paradise

2006-05-17T14:49:00.000+08:00

Not all is rosy this week.

EPaySurf
Things are looking shaky over here. Payouts seem to have been delayed, and some members have not been paid over 20 days. While the email updates have been pretty consistent and much appreciated, the facts do speak for themselves. Let's hope things do turn around fast, before it turns into a free for all bashing fest (if it hasn't already happened yet). I'm personally in profits here hence have not been actively keeping up todate with what's going on with the program, relying solely on the email updates.

If it does turn around, turning private completely would really take away all the doom and gloom crowd away. I hope if and when they eventually turn private, they would do away with referral commissions. It would no longer serve a purpose an longer.

NSFG
Trading for the month has been concluded and it turned out to be -2.8%. The gentlemen running the program are in the process of switching brokers, hence no more trading would be done.

It's also a good thing for me since I was going to set up a managed account. Looks like staying my ground instead of rushing to get it up was the right move. It saved me a considerable amount in losses in both the negative trading as well as the cost involved in opening the managed accounts. When the new brokers are in place, I'd probably take a couple of months to let Paul and Kenneth acclimatise with the new broker before I get all dizzy and jump into the managed accounts again.

Besides the negative returns (which was regrettably disappointing), making their forum read-only is the largest disappointment for me. For a program that prided itself on its openness and tranparency, not allowing us to participate in an active discussion is just counter-productive. While the discussions are not always cordial or productive, it was an outlet for members to come together to interact and share experiences. I, for one, always enjoyed reading forums where the admiistrators actively participated with it's members. Even if/when the administrators were busy, I found that we were always able to keep ourselves entertained. I do hope they would rescind their decision with regards to the forum.

GottaLottaHits
Well, good thing not all is doom and gloom. I did manage to get a 50% refund from Christian. I do not know when I would be getting the other 50%, but this is a pretty darn good start for me. I had already lost all hope of getting anything back until the email reply a few days back.

GottaLotta Response

2006-05-14T10:45:00.000+08:00

After generally whining, bitching and almost cursing about the lack of response from Christian, I did manage to finally get a response a couple of days back. Although I haven't gotten paid yet, at least my presence has been acknowledged. It seems I was probably forgotten, and now put in queue for a refund up to 50% of my entire upgrades.

As for GottaLottaHits, the program seems to be in the eternal process of starting up. Looks like Christian is making sure there are no hiccups when it does eventually re-start. Personally, from the sounds of it, you would have to actually read the sites since there would be questions asked regarding the contents of advertisements. Seems like alot of work for the normal autosurf bloke. I doubt the new program would make much waves, since the average autosurfer is a lazy cretin. How else would it explain why we do not find a REAL job in the REAL world, but instead contend to gamble our money online?

Of course it all remains to be seen how the program is run and the general reception to it. This cretin waits in anticipation for (1) payment/refund and (2) the re-start of the program, preferrably in that order.

eDataSurf Clarifications

2006-05-12T14:00:00.000+08:00

With regards to the last entry on eDatasurf, Ramesh has come forth to make some clarifications. I know this can be found in the comments in the last post, but I thought it would have been better to repost his comments here. I know alot of people, myself included, who don't read comments on blogs and other sites. Unfortunately that is the result of being overwhelmed by information, one has to be selective in choosing what to read.

Hi there,

I wanna make a point clear. There is one forum which posted such a poor, biased report that I am in debts with Stormpay which is highly base less report. I agree I funded stormpay a/c using credit cards. But it is not as someone quoted as with 20 credit cards. In fact I have only 8 cards. And I have a very very clean re-payment with all the banks I deal with. I am not in any debts or whatsoever as the person wrote in the a particular forum. The remarks sent out against me are keeping a old unpleasant discussion he had with me in the same forum months back about a famous program. Keeping that in mind he posted such bad remarks. If he can prove this as a truth that I am in debts with any bank, I am ready to close the site. To prove this I am ready to scan my CC statements and put it publically (of course the statements would be of last month prior to I start eDatasuf)

Happy Surfing!!!

Ramesh / eDs Admin
http://eDatasurf.com
http://eDatamerge.biz

First and foremost, I would like to thank Ramesh for coming forward to make his stand clear. The impact would have been greater if he confronted the person in question on the forum in question. As my readership is small, the impact would of course be very much limited.

Secondly, showing CC statements to dispel the rumours is a good way of showing proof. However, I'm taking an approach of a gambler here, hence, hardwork done on eDatamerge is enough for me to work with. If I had a choice, I would prefer to have proof that the money deposited is used meaningfully in generating profits, but it's not something I would push for. It opens more cans of worms than not, and we all know where that road generally leads to.

So I treat it like a black box. Money goes in, and money comes out, how it works.....I don't know, I don't want to know and I don't care.

Bear in mind that eDs generates about 1.71% in pure profits daily, after deducting the 5% administrative fee. In all my years working in a bank with all sorts of investment opportunities (from oil trading to real estate), this figure is hardly, if ever, attainable on a consistent basis.

Now onto more productive information.

eDs has migrated to a new server and engaged the services of Prolexic for their DDoS proection. As everyone knows, Prolexic costs an arm and a leg...literally, and sometimes more. As a result, withdrawal fees will be increased to 5% on the 28th of May.

More importantly are the changes made a week or so back which gives me enough confidence to upgrade my account to the maximum or thrive to maintain it there, as and when I have the spare e-gold (e-gold sometimes has a funny way of making their way out). In the changes made, credits would be at a premium. Credits would only be given on upgrade purchases and no credits would be earned from surfing. This, in my opinion, is what all and most autosurfs and manual surfs should thrive to achieve. It gives value to advertising which should be the bread and butter of traffic exchanges. Instead of competing on percentage return, we compete for advertising. This is truely what makes eDs stand out from the rest of the other traffic exchanges in the industry.

The other confidence booster here is the way Ramesh has handled the program. Taking preemptive measure to ensure the program is not disrupted, like having a very good DDoS proection and moving to larger servers. The ability to learn from the mistakes from others has put eDs in a position to grow above its competitors and outlast them in a cut-throat industry.

As of this posting, eDs is poised to past the 20 day mark with significant growth with over 650 active members and over 70k in upgrades. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the program should enjoy a fairly long and productive life for it's members (and my pockets).

Shades of Neglect

2006-05-05T17:12:00.000+08:00

I've not been active as much as I wanted in the past week. It's election time from where I come from, and although my area is not contested, I've been busy keeping myself updates on the events surrounding it. On top of that I probably wouldn't be as active in the following weeks as I'm planning a trip next month with some childhood friends.

EPaySurf
As everyone should already know by now, the website for EPaySurf has been down for almost a week and it has ruffled a few feathers in the community in general. Personally, I'm not even concerned. There is no neglect here. The administrator, Kent Black, has been sending out constant email updates to keep us on our toes. Anyway according to the latest update, the site is current incorporated off shore (whatever that means) and wouldn't be affected in future by the SEC or any other governing bodies. More importantly, there is a rough estimate that the site should be up the coming Monday. I'm personally grateful for the constant flow of information in my mailbox.

What's perhaps the more pertinent, is the announcement that membership here would probably go private in the near future. A date has not been selected for that, so I would encourage anyone who thinks of EPaySurf as a viable source of income to sign up as and when the site is up. Thus far, Kent has been upfront and has proven able to handle the growing pains of the program. Or at the very least, communication has been at the top level, keeping confidence in the program high. As with all programs, it would generally be good to read up on the program in the various forums and decide for yourself if this program is for you.

eDataSurf
Generally, the program has been facing downtime every now and again. It stamps from a healthy growth rate, hence the administrator is moving over to a larger server, able to handle the load.

I've also read some unsavoury remarks that Ramesh could possibly be under heavy debts from the StormPay fiasco. I'll leave you to once again read the forums and decide for yourselves if this is a viable income option. For me, at least in the short term, I would still be putting my money here. I find the reasons for him doing a runner rather unlikely at this point in time. My stand may change in the near future, and I would keep all informed via this blog.

NSFG
This is probably a pretty big disappointment here. There are no returns for the month of April, at least there are no losses. Apparently those who opened a managed account since Feb have faced losses of up to 20% to date. Not to mention recent trading has been somewhat disappointing, taking up to 4% losses just in this month (ie. 3 trading days).

I still have alot of trust in the guys running this. What's important to note is that there is real trading going on here, and that equates to profits and losses. Of course profits are the reason we sign up for the program but losses are just part of the package. I'd be looking forward to starting my managed account here when I get back from my holidays, and hopefully by then things would have taken a change for the better.

GottaLottaHits
Again the pet peeve here is that there is no communication whatsoever. My emails still have not been answered, while the new program is going ahead, with annoucements coming up. It's disappointing how bad this one has turned out to be. I'm shocked given the reputation of Christian to complete ignore the issues at hand. And I'm even more shocked that people are actually going to stand behind him.

LilicUnicornSurf
Surprisingly, after writing this off, it's suddenly sprung back up to life. The new site LilacUnicornEgold is up and running. I'm not too sure about the plans here as I skimmed thru the email, but at least Laura hasn't run away afterall. I still have money in the original site and not too sure how that will be handled. Will wait for more updates before making plans here.

A couple of AutoSurfs
I've recently been involved in a few other autosurfs and have generally been paid and been impressed by some of them. Maybe if time permits, I'd be introducing a couple which I think might be good options to gamble in.

April Payouts

2006-04-30T21:13:00.000+08:00

GottaLottaHits
Looks like the new GLH is going to be up in a few hours. Unfortunately I cannot in good faith recommend it to anyone. I've still not received the first round of refunds nor have I heard from Christian despite sending 2 emails in the past one and a half months.

Looks like he's refunding selectively and from what I've seen in the forums, mostly are small account holders. I've over $800 out of pocket in the program and only received slightly over $300 in payouts. I suppose at the end of the day, I leave you to draw your own conclusions here. As of right now, I'm giving this a huge thumbs down.

EPaySurf
I've updated the blog entry here together with both EpaySurf and EPaySurfMini payouts for the entire month of April.

The site is currently down for maintenance and hopefully would be up in the next 2-3 days. The great thing here is that there is always constant updates coming from Kent either by email or thru the forums. This is what first class communication from an administrator should be about. It keeps members up to date on progress as well gives confidence in the program.

eDataSurf
I've received a small payment from them and the blog entry has been updated to reflect this. I'm sure more payments will arrive on a weekly basis. Right now it's a very new program and a good time to join and make some cash here.

NSFG
If my reading of the reports are correct, it's probably going to be another poor result for the month of April. We broke even here this month. I suppose that's probably good that we didn't make any losses. We'd probably have to wait for an official statement from the guys here to see if there are any returns, positive or negative.

What's more important for me is that managed accounts and pooled accounts reports the same result. I'm still waiting on official word on the differences between the 2 account types for Mar and Feb. I've already positioned myself to set up a managed account, and now only waiting for news to see if I should go ahead or put a hold onto my plans.

Lady Luck, you don't visit often enough

2006-04-28T06:36:00.000+08:00

Don't let the topic fool you. I'm a firm believer that hard work and competence goes along way in this arena. Learning from mistakes and more importantly, learning to avoid them would prevent unnecessary heartache. However, luck also plays an integral part.

MPDW
As everyone knows MPDW has become my favourite whipping boy the past month and a half. If you've been following the shenanigans, they posted their first loss the past week and their reserve balance basically collapsed. Of course there was the usual excuse of rogue traders and private placement programs not fulfilling their end of the bargain.

Well, allow me to gloat alittle, I feel like I deserve it after abit of stick I received, not only in the forums but even via the email contact on this blog. I still can't understand why others were not as quick or as desparate to get out when they could. Sure there was the risk of endless waiting, but didn't it seem clear when they stronged-armed us that something was amiss? I would've assumed that getting something was always better than getting nothing.

Personally I'm even surprised I got out unscathed, but I'm surely not complaining. It's about due time Lady Luck paid a visit. Unfortunately her visits are erractic at best. Well, at least she makes her rounds when it matters.

Hyips
I been making pretty good money with hyips since Feb this year. Taking a conservative approach and doing it with abit of research. Unfortunately, this month I took a beating. Every game or gamble that I went in actually went haywire. Even after exercising plenty of conventional knowledge and common sense, I still ended up on the losing end. Scammers and incompetence runs rampant here. To make matters worse, most programs are run by incompetent scammers.

Looks like Lady Luck deserted me, or she's telling me to stop. The silver lining here is that even though I lost everytime, the amounts were relatively small. Time to take a rest, but the itch will be back, I'm sure of it.

AutoSurfs
I've been cautious about joining autosurfs in the past couple of months. There are plenty of good looking sites, many providing very good public DD information, and I've been avoiding them all. However I'm beginning to sense that the so-called industry may be in for a minirevival. Either the admistrators are getting more in tuned to our needs or the scammers are getting smarter. Either way, it boils well for players like myself.

eDataSurf (Manual Surf)

2006-04-25T01:33:00.001+08:00

eDataSurf is run by Ramesh Kumar from Chennai, India, and also a long time member of MMG. Let's start with the bad before going on to the good here.

He owns a website called eDataMerge which is essentially a monitor site. And I'm sure anyone who has gone thru my blog knows what I think of them. In fact I believe both Ramesh and myself started on the wrong footing in the MMG forums, especially with my perception of him being a referral whore. I've somewhat soften that notion after seeing the amount of work he has done on his site. I've always been an advocator of passive income, but making money of others isn't my way of doing it. At least he's put in effort and hard work in keeping his referrals up to date and more importantly, he tests programs with his own money. On top of that he constantly writes newsletters on his findings, his hits and misses with regards to the traffic exchange industry.

However via conversation with him and seeing his conversations with others, I've seen that he not only works hard on his site, but projects a genuine sincerity. But of course take my words with a pinch of salt, if you will. You can never judge true sincerity over words typed on a screen.

On to the program. eDataSurf is run on a dedicated server. I'm personally in with $500. I believe in Ramesh's sincerity. Moreover what's more important is that I believe with all that he has seen and gone thru with his 'monitor' site, he would be experienced enough to avoid the pitfalls in this industry. I'm actually taking a leap of faith in his competence, more than anything. Hopefully my faith would be repaid in the profits that follow. Moreover some members from India have met him, making it kinda hard to do a runner. A determined scammer would still get away, but I have no doubts in my mind that Ramesh isn't one of those types.

Screenshots of Payment

Apr 06
May 06

Here are the statistics of the site:

Manual Surf
No signup bonus
8% daily
$10 per ad pack (upgrade)
10 site to earn 8%
5% referral commission
Minimum payout $10
Pays automatically on Saturday for earnings made on the previous Sunday
2% withdrawal fee
Maximum upgrade $1000

If interested, please use the links below.

No referral link
My link

Payment Processors

2006-04-18T05:11:00.000+08:00

I realised that the entire section on pay processors has been neglected. There have been major changes since I last updated that section back in Feb, especially with the demise of Stormpay and EMO. Not to mention the one which I was pimping so hard, Auto-Surf Money. Thankfully this lazy blogger has removed all of them.

Well, one thing's for sure here, nothing stays static for too long, not even payment processors.

New GottaLotta?

2006-04-16T00:31:00.000+08:00

GottaLottaHits
Just got this in my mailbox when I checked my mail box earlier today.

100% Refund: It has been our plan all along to refund 100%, but due to our losses we were unsure how we were going to be able to do so. Therefore, we decided to start with 50% for three reasons; (1) to buy us time to better understand what our January-February losses were, (2) not knowing what the chargeback frenzy would do as some have been paid and still charged back 100% , and (3) to give us time to see if our program could be restructured. After discussions with six attorneys, we are sure that the old GLH is un-correctable. Trying to continue to offer a way
for the average person to make money online, we came up with a new program based on the first five attorney's advice. Yesterday we met with an attorney (our sixth) that specializes in affiliate programs and have been given a thumbs up for our NEW program (which is not a paid to surf
site or investment). Having now received this, we are ready to announce the 100% refund for ALL members. More good news, we will have additional money left over after this first round of refunds is completed around the 20th, so we should begin our second round of refunds around the 21st (late next week). Our profits from the new program should be able to fund the completion of the 100% refund process. Most of the financial loss GLH endured was out of my control, but I believe it to be the right thing for me to continue to work to see to it that everyone be refunded 100%. I cannot put a timetable as to how soon we will be able to finish everyone's 100% refund, but we will use 100% of our profits each month of our new business until everyone has been thus refunded. We are still going to be announcing our new program late tomorrow with an official launch of May 1, and will be offering a pre-launch for existing GLH members around the 25th. Members are NOT required to continue in our new program to be refunded for the old program, we will be fair to all.

Christian

Quite frankly I don't know what to make of it. 100% refunds always 'sounds' good in a program where hardly anyone actually made profits. But in reality we know how all these promises go, so I wouldn't be counting my chickens soon.

And speaking of reality, I haven't gotten my 50% refund yet, despite joining and upgrading in Oct, and another time in Jan, even though those should have already been dealt with. Anyway, I'm cutting Christian some slack here. According to the timeline given, it should be in by the 20th. Again not keeping my hopes up here, just hoping everything turns out fine.

EPaySurfMini
I just got paid 60% here. The other 40% will be credited to my EPaySurf account. According to the administrative team, the new script for EPSM will be ready within the next 2 weeks.

So far the administrative team here has kept everyone adequately informed of updates and payments have been prompt. There is also very little push to pimp the program, which personally endears me to the program. At least it's not giving the impression that it's a ponzi which needs new members to facilitate operations.

SurfIce
Surprise surprise. I actually got paid here.

I've been making my rounds in the forums basically bashing the program due to the similar nature it's being run to a well-known scam known as Paid Response/Paid Exposure. In fact they run the same script, have an almost uncannily similar style of management and recently payments have been delayed in a similar fashion.

In case anyone is wondering why I even put my money here despite badmouthing the program...I didn't. I did not put a cent into the program. During their initial promotion, I was presented a $20 account level and compounded from that since Jan 06 to a level where I can withdraw.

However I'm still not encouraging anyone to join the program. From what I read, payments have been erratic at best. From what I've seen, smaller payouts have been made and the larger amounts are still left in limbo. Well, don't say you haven't been warned.

Goodbye MPDW

2006-04-13T18:09:00.000+08:00

MPDW
I got a full payout today and am officially no longer a MPDW member (PHEW!). The payout was nice due to the increase in the price of gold in recent weeks. I've almost tripled my money here since August last year.

Now I don't have to waste my energy worrying when they will shift the goal posts again, and locking up or finding excuses to hold on to my money. I'm still adament that the program is a ponzi and a scam waiting to happen.

NSFG
This is the second month they have experienced less than stellar results. At least the results are still positive. Part of the reason for this was lowering their stop-loss from 1% to 0.5%, thus missing out on a number of good trades. Things however are looking up for the month of April.

March 06 = 3.06%(Net)/4.08%(Gross)

What is more worrying to me is the discrepencies between the pooled account and the managed account. Apparently the managed accounts are making losses while the pooled accounts registered a positive return. Will wait the official word from Paul and Ken on this. It's particularly interesting to me since I'm just about to take the plunge and dropping 25k into their managed accounts. I may wait another couple of months depending on how this develops and how satisfatory the answers to the queries are.

LilacUnicorn
Looks like this one has bite the dust. No more updates via emails, nor in their forums. I've removed them from this blog.

GottaLottoHits
I've still yet to get a sniff from them. No refunds have been made to me despite claims that all refunds from Oct-Feb have been made. To top it off, they are relaunching the site on the 15th of April. I don't even know what to make of this. At least I've already counted this as a complete loss.