To truly understand the High-Yield Investment Program (HYIP) market, it's helpful to stop viewing it as a simple collection of individual websites and instead see it as a complex, self-sustaining ecosystem. This ecosystem has its own set of distinct players, its own flow of capital, and its own strange, almost symbiotic relationships between its inhabitants. The primary players in this ecosystem are the 'producers' (the HYIP admins who create the programs), the 'consumers' (the investors who provide the capital), and a host of other organisms that feed on the flow of money, such as the monitors and the professional promoters. Understanding the roles and motivations of each of these players can help you to navigate the ecosystem more effectively. The HYIP admins are the apex predators, but also the primary producers of the ecosystem's 'food source'—the investment programs themselves. As we've detailed in The HYIP Admin's Playbook, their goal is to extract as much capital as possible from the ecosystem before disappearing. They create the environment that all other players inhabit.
The investors, or the 'consumers,' are not a monolithic group. They can be broken down into different 'species' with different survival strategies. There are the 'grazers'—the cautious, long-term investors who prefer the slow-and-steady approach of 'sleeper' programs. Then there are the 'hunters'—the aggressive, short-term players of the 'fast HYIP game.' There is also a large population of 'prey'—the novice investors who are new to the ecosystem, lack a clear strategy, and are the primary food source for the admins and other, more experienced players. The monitors, such as we analyzed in our guide to the lifecycle of a monitor, act as a kind of 'scavenger' or 'clean-up crew.' They feed on the listing fees paid by the admins, but also provide a valuable service to the ecosystem by identifying and flagging the 'dead' programs, or scams. The professional promoters and gurus are another species entirely, acting as 'pollinators.' They spread information about new programs and guide the 'herds' of investors, but they take a significant cut of the ecosystem's capital in the form of referral commissions.
What emerges is a strange and often brutal symbiotic web. The investors need the admins to create the programs that offer the potential for profit. The admins need the investors to provide the capital for their scams. The monitors need both the admins and the investors for their business model to work. Even the relationship between the skilled investor and the novice investor is symbiotic in a predatory way; the profits of the skilled often come from the liquidity provided by the unskilled who enter the program too late. For a visual metaphor, imagine a complex food web diagram, as seen in ecology. 
. Why is this ecological perspective useful? Because it encourages a systems-level thinking. It helps you to understand that the actions of one group will affect all the others. A crackdown on HYIP admins will cause a 'famine' for investors and monitors. A loss of confidence among the investor 'herd' will starve the admins of new capital. By understanding your own position within this complex web, you can make more intelligent decisions about how and when to participate. It helps to contextualize your own strategy and to appreciate the powerful, systemic forces that are at play beyond the success or failure of any single program.
