Due Diligence (or "DD" for short) is a process involving investigation and evaluation of an opportunity before actually investing money in it. Carefully following all the steps it implies will provide you with highly valuable information that can help you to estimate the risks and increase the probability of profits. The actual investigation starts the moment an opportunity becomes of interest to you and can easily be done online. Just follow these steps:

1. Check the website itself

Pay attention to the investment program's website design. Try to avoid poorly designed websites using standard scripts, templates, FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and terms. Unrealistic returns, contradictory statements and useless content are other indications of a program's low quality.

2. Find out what it looked like in the past.

Some admins claim that their program has been online for several years and there is an easy way to verify this. Visit http://www.archive.org and enter the program's domain name in the search box at the top. A list with the website's archived pages should show up. If there are no entries this could only mean that the website you searched for isn't older than 6 months. If there are - click on any of them to see what this website looked like on the corresponding day.

3. Search forums and monitoring sites for more information.

Forums are a great way to discuss the programs you are going to invest in. Make sure you visit some of the most popular investment forums regularly as they usually have the most up to date info on programs and some of the admins even offer their support there. Besides you will be able to estimate the health of a program by monitoring the paid posts of regular investors.

Other important tools to check a program's payment status are the monitoring sites. Not only do they tell a program's current status but also offer rating functionality. Check out how a program is rated by other investors and avoid the ones with too many negative ratings.

4. Look at the WHOIS info.

WHOIS information is data provided by domain name registrants while registering it. You can check the WHOIS info for every program listed on our monitor by visiting the "Program Details" pages.

This data will give you some info on the domain registrant's address and phone number, domain's creation and expiration date and nameservers for the domain. With this info you could verify the physical location of the people behind a program or at least call them by the number given in the whois info to check if the ones who answer you are the real website owners. Domain's creation and expiration date might give you an idea how serious the owners are. If they claim to be online for several years but the domain name is not even one month old they are certainly lying. On the other hand a domain paid for 3 years in advance indicates that the owners intend to stay for long. Nameservers may reveal where the website is hosted if they are not unique. If they are, it means that the owners run their program on a dedicated server and put some effort into setting it up.

5. Check the documents.

Some programs offer copies of their incorporation, taxation or any other documents for your Due Diligence. You can always contact the authorities that issued these documents to check if they are authentic and hold off making investments if they aren't.

Now you know what to do to evaluate an investment program before putting money in it. It's essential that you do your Due Diligence with every program that catches your eye but remember the "Golden Rule" - never invest what you can not afford to lose.