As I've done a review of progress for the first two quarters of the year it's time I had a look back at the third quarter to see how things have gone.

It would be great to report that things have all been very positive and that all of my online investing has gone smoothly with money rolling in to my various accounts. Unfortunately that, as I'm sure you'll have guessed, is more pie in the sky than reality.

So, let's look in more detail at what has happened. Perhaps the most significant event in the past three months has been the collapse of Colon End Parenthesis and the associated surfing sites. The US authorities took it upon themselves to investigate this programme, the end result being that many people have been left looking at significant losses in their bank accounts. Again, it's easy to say that no-one should rely on these sort of online investments as a steady source of income but in reality it seems that a fair number of people did so this collapse had a far reaching impact on many people (and I'm not trying to minimise any impact to those who may not have relied on the returns for day-to-day living but still lost substantial sums).

Another company to fall foul of the US authorities was E-gold and it has taken them some time to re-group and get back to some form of normality and there is still some evidence that difficulties still exist. Many online programmes have removed E-gold as an accepted payment gateway which doesn't help.

Much of the last three months has seen focus on the various Reverse Pension Plan (RPP) programmes available. Programmes such as Global Pension Plan and HCI25 have been in the news, Global Pension Plan because they are close to achieving the target 100,000 members and HCI25 because they fell foul of their host provider. It's still too early to confirm whether any of these programmes will pay out but at least both of them are still around and appear to want to achieve a successful outcome. In a similar vein Imperia Invest continues to draw new members and there are signs that this too will be a winner, although nothing is guaranteed.

The recent rise in the price of gold to well above $700 per ounce has been a welcome positive sign and I continue to invest in gold via BullionVault. Hopefully this will be a continuing trend and many analysts see increasing rises over the short to medium term.

Whilst we all hope that returns will come quickly the reality of online investing is that the vast majority of online programmes take much longer to mature than originally hoped. A good example of this is Shop Right as this programme hoped to make payouts well over a year ago. Members are still waiting for that first payment.

There are several others where progress has been somewhat slower than hoped although there are signs that the lights at the end of the tunnels are beginning to glimmer. Let's see what happens in the next six months or so.

One of the more positive areas of success is in Fixed Odds Trading. Having put something of a hold on the trades recommended by Matt Shaw I've now re-started using them as he has become fairly reliable at making trades. I'm also still using City Beaters as they are maintaining a good record of successful trades. I'm looking to learn more about FOREX trading so hopefully this will reinforce this field as a good way of earning money.

The recent addition of gibline as a money making opportunity is very exciting as the payment plan has a lot going for it and the good thing is that you can be totally passive and still make money. Slightly longer term TriVita looks very promising as here again the business model is somewhat different from what has gone before. With the ability to 'buy' customers from the company there is scope to make money without prospecting yourself.

In conclusion I'd like to think that the end of this quarter is more optimistic than previous ones and I am cautiously confident that the future will be profitable. We'll check in again at the end of 2007.