#1 - Search all HYIP forums for the name of the HYIP. Check for people spamming about the program, as this usually is a sign of a short lived scam. Look for people's opinions. Often those who have been investing in HYIPs for some time are the ones with the best insite. Most importantly, look for complaints of people who have not been paid.

#2 - Do a search on google. Copy small parts (1-2 sentences) of the text from both the hompage and the page with information on how they make their returns. Paste it into the google search bar with quotes around it, and see if anything comes up. A good amount of the time, google will return results that are an exact match, usually a professional traders website. Also, do the same thing with any images of people that are shown to look as though they are the admin of the program. Simply get the name of the file that the image is uploaded as by viewing the properties of it. Then paste this into the google image search. You will be amazed that a lot of the time you will see that the image is a direct copy from another site. This proves that the admin is lying.

#3 - Email the admin. Ask some good questions such as, where are you located, how long have you been around, and how do you make your returns. The common answers you will receive are United States, 2 Years, and Forex trading. Usually if these are the answers the admin is lying to you. about 75% of all new HYIPs claim that they have been paying members offline for over a year. 99.9999% of the time this is a lie. If an investing firm is able to deal with members offline for 2 years, there usually is no need to go online with their business.

#4 - Look at the main HYIP rating sites. If it looks like a program has been cheating the ratings by voting for themselves, or it looks like they may have hired a paid voter, then stay away. You can usually tell if a program is cheating by trying to look at what else each member has voted for. Also check the voters IP, maybe the cheaters were not careful and didn't use a proxy

All in all, if you follow these 4 steps you will likely be saving yourself a descent amount of money in the long run. HYIPs are extremely risky, and these steps alone do not guarantee success. They only improve your chances of walking away with profits.