In doing your research , you should be able to spot legit companies that i making little profit yet they have a lot of members trusting, they also turn to be scam , they can run a ponzi especially cloud mining companies, They might have a mining plant , however the mining contracts they are selling would be a ponzi scheme.
I remember when the cloud mining ponzi still popular.Many people advertising their affiliate link.At that time i also fell for investing my bitcoin on cloud mining.Lucky is only a small amount of bitcoin.For now,still recovering my lose little by little.