Earning online is moving to a completely new level, and HYIPs are keeping pace with the general trend. The HYIP industry is actively reshaping itself to fit current reality. A couple of years ago HYIPs were less technically equipped and could not boast high returns: today anything paying from 16% to 60% is considered mid-yield, whereas not long ago even 15-18% a month was thought of as a stroke of luck. Let us look at how HYIPs have changed over time.

Many trends that dominated the HYIP scene until recently are now hopelessly outdated. The first thing to go out of fashion was including the deposit principal in payouts. Suppose a project offers you 20% profit with the deposit included in the payouts. That used to be considered maximally reliable. Now, with scams having become more frequent, nothing reliable is left in it. So today there is no real difference between such projects and ones that return the deposit at the end of the term.

One of the best-known trends of 2015 was social projects. The idea was that the project's money would theoretically be held not by the admin but by "keepers" - ordinary investors, and anyone could become one. A fine theory. In practice things worked out rather differently: money most often trickled to the keepers slowly and in small amounts, and the projects did not survive even their first cycle.

The green bar, which used to be a marker of a project's reliability and stability, no longer is one, because it is very easy to buy. Its price is not low, though, which still gives some hope that a project will not die early.

The lot system in HYIPs has likewise sunk into oblivion, for one simple reason: the last HYIPs with lots were not especially effective in terms of profit.

All the legends involving Dubai, cars, houses and the like quickly lost relevance, and investors are no longer so eager to put money into such projects.

There also used to be a belief that having many payment systems in a project was a very good sign. Today, if an experienced investor sees Qiwi or Yandex.Money on the list, it will more likely puzzle them, because these are "white" services that watch the transparency of their payments closely and may therefore freeze all funds in a questionable account if the data looks doubtful. Competition in the HYIP industry is high, so admins of rival projects have every interest in immobilising a competitor's running gear - its accounts. With payment systems like these that is far easier to do, which in turn naturally brings the scam closer.

This short list shows that not every trend in HYIPs can stay relevant. So which trends have pulled ahead?

First, the search for a capable admin who has already run and administered at least one successful project that lasted more than one cycle. It is better to keep an eye on roughly 80% experienced admins, while not forgetting newcomers, who can also perform well - they can be allocated up to 20% of your portfolio. Incidentally, it has lately become something of a rule that foreign admins outperform domestic ones - a sad fact, but a fact.

The second trend is having a legend. Many people look precisely at that rather than at the technical side of a project. Why? The answer is simple: HYIPs with a legend - supporting documents, photographs of offices and so on - are most often more reliable and operate more effectively.

Third is advertising, which should be smooth and gradual rather than aggressive and enormous from the very start, and also design. The design should not hurt the eye or irritate the investor. It should also be unique rather than copied from another project. Otherwise it means only one thing: the admin cut corners, which means their scam is less controllable and may arrive far sooner than in a well-made project.

And one more new trend is a multilingual project. That means not only that serious work went into it, but also that it has a wide reach, and all of this gives a certain confidence in its future.

In closing, it is worth noting that the evolution of HYIPs continues today, because investment projects like these cannot stand still and keep offering investors the same thing forever. Compared with yesterday, admins today have to find new approaches to investors, improve their projects both aesthetically and technically, and try to postpone the project's scam and give investors a chance to earn maximum profit - which is what allows HYIPs to remain one of the main ways of earning online even now.