Can you make money with HYI (High Yield Investments)?

In 2008/2009 I lost 3 businesses, due to stupid decisions, bad luck and the start of the recession also played it's part. I had a lot of debt and recurring expenses, but the income was gone, so things was getting tighter and tighter.

Eventually, I lost my house and my car. Fortunately, I have a fabulous wife, who still support and love me. Anyway, in 2011, I started to surf the net for ways to make money and was overwhelmed at how many opportunities there were. (I easily trust people.)

I couldn't believe it took me so long to realize this Pot of Gold (Don't laugh.). I needed money quick and was willing to invest. Fortunately, I didn't have much to invest.

I soon got attracted to the High Yield Investment niche. According to my calculation, I was going to be financially free within a year and that with a meager $200 investment spread over 5 HYI programs. I won some and I lost some, but after 6 months I was back to square 1, with my $200 back in my pocket. I didn't make money and didn't lose any. 

It was very exciting, because I was getting experienced now and set up an excel sheet, with programs that looked good, had a good rating with scamadvisor, webutation and other watchdogs. I also checked HYI monitors to see which programs were paying. My system was foolproof and now I was going to make millions online.

Needless to say, a couple of months later, I lost everything. It turns out that 99.9999% of HYI programs close their doors within a year or was a scam to start of with. (This is bad news for all of us who want to make an online income, as people become more skeptical, which influence sales negatively.)

So can you make money from HYI? Yes, if you become a Monitor of HYI programs, because gullible, needy or greedy people, like me, go there to see if a site is paying and end up clicking and signing up through that Monitor. 

The HYI programs pays good commission on referrals, so they make huge amounts just on that and I think some corrupt HYI programs pay only the monitors so that their site shows a positive rating.

You can also benefit through referrals, but do you really want to do that?

If you like to gamble, be my guest, but I won't suggest going this route.
I give HYI 1 out of 10.