The HYIP industry is a field where sometimes even two admins can barely find room to operate - and most likely will not. Projects launched every day mostly resemble one another. Only a handful run stably and effectively, thanks to admins who know what they are doing. Once an admin has earned popularity, they have to keep up the standard. Whether that actually holds true is what we will work out here.

Earning a good reputation is not hard for an admin - one successfully closed project is quite enough. Most often these are HYIPs that ran stably for several cycles and made investors money. After that the admin becomes practically a star: people remember them by their handle or by the name of the project they successfully wound up. So when word goes round that this admin is back in business, rest assured the new project has attention and hype guaranteed. The only question is how good the new project will be.

If information appears from the very start that the project is run by a personality well known and successful in HYIP circles, do not rush to invest straight away. It may not work in your favour. It is quite likely that hit-and-runners have already gone in with a large sum. That way most of the project's cash box ends up in their pockets. From there the situation will most likely unfold as follows: the admin, seeing that the project is already a big success, may well close it earlier than expected. Alternatively, if the hit-and-runners react quickly and manage to exit, the admin may be left without funds for payouts and the project will be closed.

Large sums at the start and a very small subsequent inflow naturally end in a scam. That said, it is worth noting that the hit-and-runners are not the only ones to blame for a project closing. Ordinary investors can also become the cause without realising it, once they hear encouraging insider talk that the project will run effectively. In that case many investors may pile in actively and with large sums from day one, and so shorten the project's life.

Let us try to sum up what we know about admins with a good name. First, popularity comes to an admin very quickly - after the very first successfully completed project. Second, many successful admins attract hit-and-runners, who with 99% probability arrange large investments into the project, which can cause it to close quickly. Third, an admin's positive reputation is no guarantee of subsequent success.

A negative reputation is naturally worse still. With a positive reputation the admin at least has to handle the incoming large deposits competently; with a negative one there is nothing to handle. Nobody who has lost money with that admin will go back to them, unless the investor has Stockholm syndrome. But admins are not caught bare-handed either. They obviously do not shout on every corner that they are scammers. Often, though, they give themselves away by not bothering to change their image, so an attentive investor can spot in no time an admin they have already dealt with. Or sometimes an insider tip appears saying the admin is not especially reliable - and from there the decision is the investors'.

A bad reputation kills a project at the root, because investors simply will not get involved with an unpromising HYIP. An admin can restore their reputation by running a successful project. A low admin rating can be exploited by paid posters hired for a black-PR campaign against the project; they will throw around phrases of which "scammer admin" is the most flattering.

Admins often try to copy a project that was successful before. They take the design, the styling, the wallets. Some do it sloppily, some more successfully, but either way such projects attract investors, because the original already proved effective. What the admin has in mind - a long run or a quick scam - is unknown. The only certainty is that investors are trusting towards such projects. A copied project can work effectively, but design alone will not get you far. Copying is merely a promotion method, a way of attracting investors on the back of someone's reputation, since successful projects create a trend that others then follow.

Next, a question investors often ask: "is this project really run by the admin I think it is?" - because it is often hard to tell imitators from the real thing. Well, the surest way is to ask the admin directly, though there is no guarantee they will tell the truth. That leaves watching the details closely: design, script, marketing, how promotion is run and similar nuances. If the working methods look similar, draw your conclusions.

A lot also depends on when a project launches. Investors are most active from January to the end of spring, and then from August to the end of December. As you can see, we exclude the long holiday and vacation periods, because everyone needs money then and scams become more frequent. On top of that, you can simply pick a time when there are no obvious competitors - then the project is far more likely to succeed.

So competition is a good thing, but in the HYIP world it is better to pick a moment when competitors are absent. Besides, a large number of identical projects quickly slide down the rating table and simply close.

It is often believed that an admin cannot pull off two or more successful projects - that it just does not happen. In practice things turn out somewhat differently: an admin can do it, but their own positive reputation can sometimes play a cruel trick on them. An admin not hungry for fame will simply forgo universal recognition and popularity by hiding their name, staying incognito while losing nothing more important - their personal experience of running a project successfully. You can hint at a connection with past successful projects, but under no circumstances announce it outright, or you will dig your project's grave. So, as everywhere in life - and especially, as it turns out, in the HYIP industry - an admin should not put their success on display and draw too many hungry eyes to the project.