In early February a friend of mine texted me while I was on my way home from work asking to speak to me about something that he came across that he felt I would be interested in. That something turned into a conversation about Neurs, a new social media platform that is to allow business opportunity providers to connect with aspiring entrepreneurs such as myself. Unfortunately my friend could not even answer basic questions that I had. However, based solely on his excitement of Neurs I decided to investigate the opportunity further to seek than answers that I sought.
I made my way to Neurs.com where I was able to watch a short promotional video that I felt was long on hype but short on details. The video stated that Neurs is made by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and almost immediately states that Neurs will be so big that it will get news coverage on CNBC and Bloomberg news and goes on to speak about how great it would have been for a person to get in on the ground floor with companies such as Microsoft, Apple and FaceBook and how many people with earns thousands of dollars while others could earn a six figure pay day. Simply put the purpose of the video was to get me excited so that I would immediately open an account and being to promote although I would have no idea as to what specifically I would be promoting, what the cost would be and how much I could earn. However, the Neurs concept still intrigued me so I decided that I would hold off on making a decision and continue to monitor Neurs as the company continued to release information.
In the meantime I decided to do a bit of research on the founders. First up was Frank Codina. I discovered that Frank Codina has spent a majority of his career working with Primerica which raised a red flag. However, I felt it would be foolish to base my conclusion on the Neurs opportunity solely based upon my feelings toward Primerica so I continued to dig which brought me to FrankCodina.com which raised a few new red flags for me. On this site Frank Codina was not only promoting Neurs but promoting a few other MLM opportunities. I apologize as I cannot recall what those opportunities were and when I attempted to go back to FrankCodina.com to further expand this review I could not get the site to load as I keep getting a 504 Gatweay Time-out which raised another red flag. Why is FrankCodina.com not loading? Is it that the site is was getting so much traffic that it crashed or is it that the site was pulled offline? Next up Dr. Denis L. Cauvier. Based on my research Dr. Cauvier appears to be a successful speaker, business owner, author and consultant. It made sense to me that they decided to team up. On one side you gave a person in Frank Codina who has spent over two decades in a successful MLM company and on the other side you have a successful and rather well know entrepreneur.
Fast forward a few weeks later and Neurs had released some further information specifically on user accounts consisting of the Entrepreneur Account, Provider Account and Full Access Account. For example, the Provider Account is $99 a month or discounted to $997 a year where an opportunity provider can create online courses, post an opportunity video, send proposals and search profiles. With the exception of making a connection, each act leads to having a certain amount of points deducted from the account. I didn’t have a problem with this and thought Neurs could be useful to providers to connect with aspiring entrepreneurs. There are plenty of sites that connect providers with opportunities at a similar price point and many of these sites do very well.
However, once the Entrepreneur promotional video was released yet another red flag was raised. The price for the Entrepreneur Account is the same as the Provider Account meaning $99 a month or discounted to $997 per year. There is no way that I would ever pay $99 a month to connect with providers as there are plenty of free ways for me to already do so. In fact I visit many of these sites on a monthly basis and have subscribed to their email lists so that I can be notified when a new opportunity advertiser begins promoting with each site. If I would pay I cannot talk others into paying especially when I believe that the product is not only overpriced, but in my opinion way overpriced. My decision to not move forward with Neurs was made at that point in time but I decided to keep up with Neurs for bit longer to assure that I did not make a rash decision.
Personally, I believe that I made the right decision. Over the coming weeks video after video was released by Neurs, not about the platform itself, but rather about the income potential that could result in upgrading to a paid affiliate account. Yet another red flag and what seemed to be a developing stream of red flags. The purpose of a company developing an affiliate program is to obtain inexpensive marketing. A company simply allows a person to promote their product or service at no cost and in return the company will compensate the affiliate in the form of a commission each time a sale of their product or service is made. Neurs does have a free affiliate account but also has 2 paid affiliate accounts. Whereas the free affiliate account allows an affiliate to receive a commission the upgraded paid affiliate accounts allows an affiliate to get paid on a multi tier level. It now made sense to me why Neurs had made a decision to charge aspiring entrepreneurs $99 a month to connect with providers, in order to be able to pay out multi tiered commissions to paid affiliate account holders.
This may not be a big deal or an issue for you but it is a big issue for me. Normally, a company will release their product or service and than decide to create an affiliate program in order to expand their reach and revenue. With Neurs, the yet released platform that is supposed to revolutionize the entrepreneurial world, rolled out their affiliate program and began accepting paid affiliate upgrades prior to the beta version of the site being released. I can’t understand why people would pay to upgrade to a paid affiliate account in the hopes of making multi tiered commissions without ever seeing or being able to test and use the Neurs platform.
Based on my online research, there appears to be a number of affiliates attempting to correlate Neurs with LinkedIn. In fact, I recall watching a Neurs video where Frank Codina himself attempted to make the correlation himself which leads me to believe that this is where this affiliate school of thought originated. The main difference between LinkedIn and Neurs is that LinkedIn is free and allows people to upgraded to different account levels. It appears that in order to utilize the Neurs platform a person, whether a provider or user, must pay. When this statement has been made by myself and others Neurs affiliates are quick to point out that it would be an open invitation for people to abuse the system which I admittedly disagree with. Neurs could easily provide free accounts to providers and opportunity seekers alike, like LinkedIn, but provide a low number of monthly credits which would still allow Neurs to maintain quality control.
Ultimately I feel that Neurs is not the opportunity that Neurs or affiliates of Neurs makes it out to be. A high price point, the absence of limited free user accounts, free and established alternatives, a multi level compensation plan combined with an attempted correlation to a multi million dollars company, namely LinkedIn, is enough for me to stay away from Neurs.
I just got an invite, reviewed the material, had the same exact reaction as you, went digging, and then found this blog post (already well indexed in Google despite being published today, good job!). Thanks, you summed up my thoughts perfectly.