Just a quick post to announce that I will be holding a competition early next week. I’m off on holiday to Spain shortly and I know that for many people a holiday abroad is out of reach. So, I want to help someone improve their financial position. The prize will be paid membership of Global Pension Plan where you will be in line for a substantial financial return.

I will post the full entry details early next week (they won’t be that onerous) so encourage your friends, family and colleagues to check my posts regularly for a chance to win.

Gold bullion has always been a very attractive investment medium for the wealthy as they recognise that it is a rare metal and this rarity provides a high market demand which outstrips supply. For those who are less well off ownership of gold has never been that easy except in the form of jewellery or coins.

One company that seeks to redress the balance by providing gold ownership at reasonable costs is Bullion Vault and they are attracting a well respected reputation for their service. I have belonged to Bullion Vault for some 4 months now and am steadily increasing the amount of gold I own. Because of the very competitive charges available and the fact that you can have your gold stored in either New York, Zurich or London the company is in a very strong position to prosper on their reputation.

If you keep abreast of economic affairs it should not escape your notice that governments are printing money to try and alleviate many of the problems that they have created over the years. This will lead to devaluation of currency and therefore less buying power for those who hold currency. One way to counteract this problem is to invest in gold as it has proved to be very resilient in keeping its value over time.

Paul Tustain, a Bullion Vault director made a presentation at the IX Investor show in the UK where he described in detail the case for gold as an investment. The information shown in the presentation is well worth reading as it provides the historical context for gold and how successive governments have abandoned any link between their currency and the precious metal.

As you can purchase gold in small quantities through Bullion Vault it provides a perfect vehicle for regular savings and this is how I operate. Each month I transfer a sum from my bank account where I can then buy gold to add to my account. As online investors we need to make sure that diversification is one weapon in our armoury and this is a good example.

Last week I mentioned that I was implementing a new policy in my posts where I would only use referral links in specific posts. This is the first of those posts and actually part of it won’t contain a specific referral link.

Let me explain. I joined a private membership site that has been closed for new members for some time. As they recently re-structured…and came out the other side the Administrator is allowing existing members to put forward new people to join. So, I’m not going to put a link in this post but will tell you how to find out more below.

If you are interested you should know that the minimum deposit is $500 and in fact if you deposit $2,500 within the next two weeks your returns will be superior to those offered at the $500 level.

The program has been paying regularly for the last three years and the new re-structuring has created an even more stable platform. Rather than contribute to investment plans the new structure makes each investor more directly involved with the company and returns are based on how well the company performs.

Payments are made each Monday and you have a choice to withdraw the money or re-invest. Every 12 weeks there will be an increased return to further enhance your investment.

Given the recent problems with payment methods the program insists that all deposits and withdrawals be made through e-swift (this is a referral link). They allow transfers via e-gold, e-bullion, paypal and more including bank wires.

If you would like to learn more please contact me at this email address

It seems as though the market for home based businesses is still going strong. I received in the post this weekend the latest edition of the newsletter, What Really Wins Money. This is published by Canonbury Publishing and like other publishing companies such as Agora Lifestyles and Fleet Street Publications there is always other marketing material sent out with each issue.

This time the owner of Canonbury Publishing, Nick Laight, is offering us a chance to subscribe to his business opportunity newsletter, What Really Makes Money. Now reading the offer material it’s clear that Nick has been active in the home business market for some time and I must admit his name has cropped up several times when I’ve been investigating various opportunities.

In this latest offer Nick is encouraging new subscribers to hand over £32 (a reduction of £5 from the original price) with the promise of a full money back guarantee if you haven’t put “…at least £15,000 into your bank account by May 2008…”. As part of the marketing material Nick includes many testimonials that confirm what is on offer has real value. However, I haven’t actually read a testimonial where anybody has actually achieved the additional income promised so I’m keeping an open mind for the present.

As £32 is a relatively small amount I’ve sent off my application and now look forward to receiving the information on offer. Watch this space…

It seems that Mike Perry of Mikes Money Making Mission has returned from holiday with renewed vigour and is again writing informative and interesting posts. One such was titled Make Money with Advertorials which caught my eye. Mike has dabbled in sponsored posts over the last few months with some success. Like myself and others he has found this to be a genuine way to make money whilst blogging although with some limitations. Primarily the downsides relate to finding products or services that suit the content of one’s blog and having enough traffic to be eligible for some of the sponsored posts.

Mike has taken action to combat these negative aspects by writing what he calls advertorials. These are posts that are specifically related to products or services that he endorses and if readers go on to purchase Mike will receive a payment. As Mike explains he is keen to ensure that readers are not hoodwinked into a purchase without them knowing that Mike has a vested interest in the purchase.

The post appealed to me because I have been somewhat torn in how to present various online investing opportunities or products. Up till now I have used contextual links in my posts that include a referral link such that if anyone clicked on the link and subscribed to the product or service I would receive a fee. I have always been somewhat uncomfortable with this as many people could feel that my endorsements were purely motivated by the fact that I would receive a fee.

So, I’ve decided to stop using referral links in my posts unless I specifically identify a post as being a product or service endorsement. By doing this I believe I will provide a more objective way to discuss various opportunities. I will still discuss products and services I use in terms of performance but will only use a referral link where I am making a specific recommendation for readers to partake. I will also make sure that the blog post identifies the post as a specific referral review or commentary.

In past posts I’ve mentioned the newsletter The Money Club and I’ve just received the latest edition. But it isn’t the newsletter I want to post about today, more about what came in the same envelope. In this particular posting there were three other ‘offers’ that were received. Two of them were for trading systems and the third was for a report related to maintaining personal privacy on the internet.

At about the same time I received the latest edition of the ezine from the Bizoppjungle and this also featured a trading system that we are encouraged to investigate.

The first posting was from Agora Lifestyles Ltd and their offers were for ‘The Guerilla Stock Trading System’ which is marketed at £1,777 and for ‘The Omega System’ which costs £497 (+VAT). The system being offered by the Bizoppjungle is Don’t Tell The Professionals from Canonbury Publishing. The cost of this particular package is £1947 (+VAT).

As all of these offers came to me at the same time I decided to do a little detective work to see what other people felt about them. I went straight to Business Opportunity Review to see whether anyone had purchased them already.

I was in luck for both ‘The Guerilla Stock Trading System’ and Don’t Tell The Professionals. The former had 4 user reviews, none of which was very complimentary, the latter had one detailed review which was very positive so that was encouraging. Whilst ‘The Omega System’ was mentioned on the site there were no reviews so it’s difficult to form any real opinion.

Now before I go any further I’m wondering whether Dave Evans over at Market Excellence has anything to say about the offers. Dave is offering a new service where he will provide full reviews of many trading systems together with hints and tips for both novice and experienced traders alike. I’m using Dave’s services in other areas and have always found him to be very responsive and knowledgeable so if, like me, you’d like to learn more about the many trading system that inhabit the internet then perhaps joining the Market Excellence service may be a good idea.

In my early online investing experience one of the programmes that I used extensively was SureBetPro from Risk Free Profit that provides sports arbitrage opportunities. For several reasons, primarily related to bookmakers penalising me from making worthwhile wagers, I decided to look elsewhere for online investing opportunities, many of which have been featured in this blog.

Whilst I’ve not been fully active with Risk Free Profit for a little while I have kept up to date with what they are doing and they have recently released a new product called XGamesPro. This software is designed to work with the games area of Betfair, the online portal where individuals can both bet and act as a bookmaker on a whole host of wagers.

It seems that once you have developed a strong games playing strategy that you can set the software to run on auto-pilot such that it will earn money for you whilst you sleep. As somewhat of a caveat you should be aware that the strategy setting can be quite difficult so you will need some good training. This is available if you join Risk Free Profit as a member. Currently the additional fee for XGamesPro is around $35 per month so you should bear this in mind as normal membership for Risk Free Profit is $137 a month.

As things happen I’ve learnt of another investment opportunity that is based on the Games Betting market at Betfair and this one doesn’t require you to actually spend time doing it yourself. Courtesy of NOBSHYIP blog the admin Jude has been featuring the website Life Holdings. Using 60% of their funds in this market and the remainder 40% in the FOREX market they have maintained an average 3.30% return per week. The minimum deposit is $200 and maximum is $20,000. The webmaster is very keen to communicate with investors and he looks as though he is someone keen to help others. They don’t offer any referral fees so there is some comfort that they are looking to cut and run down the road.

In the first couple of months of this year I mentioned an additional advisory service, Citybeaters that I was trialling with my BetonMarkets account. The service is run by two brothers who trade the FOREX element at BetonMarkets and have produced some good results. Just after starting the trial I received an email to say that the service was being suspended as both men were very busy on other ventures.

Today I received an email to say that Citybeaters is now resuming service. This is good news as I didn’t get enough time previously to fully evaluate how profitable it might be. Previously the service was offered on a free 21 day trial basis which turned out to be somewhat short for a proper assessment as advisories were not made that often and if you hit the wrong time in the trial period you may not have been able to fully validate the recommendations.

This shortcoming has now been acknowledged and the trial has been extended for a further week to a full 28 days. There is also a change of responsibility going forward as the two brothers are effectively swapping roles. Previously Graeme was the main trader for the service, now his brother Chris will take the day to day responsibility for advising of trades with Graeme acting as a consultant. Prior to the re-launch Chris has successfully predicted 21 trades so hopefully this service will continue to prosper.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with BetonMarkets they offer a fixed odds betting service where individuals can trade on movements in the major stock indices and the FOREX markets. This form of trading can be attractive as you always know what your potential profit will be assuming the trade expires successfully. This also means of course that you know what any potential loss might be and it can never be forgotten that losses do happen, hence the need to only trade with funds that you can afford to lose.

So far this week the online investing news is not encouraging. It seems that FeederFund have run into difficulties with one of the vehicles they were investing in. PSHI has turned out to be a scam with one person, Blake Prater being named as the main culprit. The result is that FeederFund are winding up all liquid accounts for payment to members by the end of May. This is very bad news for a lot of people as FeederFund provided a way for people to invest in programs that ordinarily required a large sum to be invested. The FeederFund offering allowed individuals to invest as little as $50 in each program, thereby giving the smaller investor some exposure to better returns.

One of the strengths that FeederFund offered its members was the level of Due Diligence that they carried out before accepting any program into their scheme. It goes without saying that even though the FeederFund admin did try to protect their investors even they could eventually be duped. For those people just starting out in online investing the probable demise of FeederFund is a real blow and one that will probably discourage many people in the future.

On the No BS HYIP blog there is an interesting post about an article on CNN about legisi.com. The article is an answer to an enquiry from someone who is nearing retirement and has heard about legisi.com and wonders whether they are a safe investment. The article’s author comes down very strongly on this being a probable scam on the basis that the publicised returns are not realistic plus they had no response when they tried to interview the CEO. Like many articles of this nature it does try to paint a very black picture with little real evidence to back up their claims. However, given that the article will be seen by many people it will probably deter many other people from seeking better returns than are available in traditional circles.

For those who refuse to accept the paltry returns offered by many large institutions it seems the road has got just a little rockier.

In this post I want to make reference to some newer sources of potential income that I’ve mentioned recently. Firstly, I’m currently paper trading using the Ultimate Betting System that I received in the middle of April. I did some paper trading during the last two weeks of that month and whilst I made a paper profit I’ve decided to try it for a full month using the same criteria that the owner of the program, Phil Moulds uses. This way I can make a more balanced decision on its potential.

I should mention that I’m highly impressed by the package both in terms of what you get for your money and the potential that exists. Both the User Guide and accompanying videos are well produced and very comprehensive. Personally I am testing the system using UK Horse racing although Phil does say that his package is suitable for other sports. I like it for horse racing as the selection method that he uses in the User Guide is very simple to follow and it only takes 30 minutes a day to make the selections. The one drawback I do face with the Ultimate Betting System at the moment is that I can’t follow the race results in real time due to work commitments so I am generally having to do a retrospective analysis which means I may be missing out on some of the better odds that would be available if I was able to monitor things as they happen.

The next thing I wanted to mention was the IYCU newsletter that is produced by Gerald Deer. His latest issue advises that he is about to let his subscribers know about 8 new passive investment opportunities. This should be very interesting as Gerald does a lot of research before he makes any recommendations so if you want to learn more please send an email to geralddeer@safe-mail.net with the subject line IYCU.

The final program I wanted to cover today is the Global Wealth Builders Offshore Privacy Club as they are now in formal pre-launch. Those of us who have already signed up will be hot-footing our membership payments this month. From what I can see the program administrators are trying very hard to make the process as simple and easy as possible. There are three levels of membership with Diamond being the most lucrative. The annual diamond membership fee is $290 which I think is reasonable given the potential for profit that exists.