Company Name: TSU
Costs: Free
Rating: 25/100
Update 2017! The most fun thing about exposing “scams” like this is coming back around a year or two later when my predictions have come to fruition. TSU, the social network, has closed down. They are now an app that supposes you can make money doing BS tasks.
To be fair, I haven't tried the app. It's on my list. But after failing as a social network, I don't have a lot of faith in their ability to develop an app that lets you make money.
Table of Contents
What Is It
TSU is an MLM style social network that pays people to share content on the website.
Short Review
From all my research, TSU seems to be a legitimate company where people can get paid. But the payment is so little, and there is so much negative noise from TSU-junkies that I can’t recommend getting involved.
Product Breakdown
I Hate Rich People
The premise behind the TSU social network is that companies like Facebook and Twitter are making money off of users and we need to ‘take back what’s ours’. This already irritates me because it plays into the GIMME GIMME type of people.
“OMG Mark Zuckerberg made a billion dollars last year and I didn’t get a penny of it. That’s UNFAIR!”
They fail to mention that he also works 12 hour days, built his multi-billion dollar company from scratch over more than a decade, and is doing all of this for a FREE social network site that the entire world can use safely.
Would I trust my financial information to TSU? No way.
I am by no means a Zuck fan (or hater), but I do appreciate that what he is doing is very different from TSU. TSU barely passed 2 million users this month (Jan 2015) while Facebook has over 1.23 billion users. Sure, the former did it faster, but they also incentivized people with money, while the latter had no plans of expansion in its original form. #justsayin
Sorry to rant here, but I really dislike the vibe around the social network that they are ‘joining hands’ to battle the industry giants and give back to the people. It sounds like a big load of crap to me.
Pyramid Model, Kind Of
The basic idea is that you get paid to share content on the site. You make a percentage of the ad revenue from what’s shared. When you recruit people to the site, you also make a percentage of the ad revenue from the content they share.
You can make money without recruiting, but the recruiting aspects increases your chances of earning depending on whether or not your recruits are active in the community or not.
Pro-TSU people don’t seem to try to hide this, which is surprising, and in my opinion, good. Usually MLMers try to hide the fact that it’s a pyramid. In my opinion, the revenue sharing is a legit product, and something that people will do anyway. If you make TSU your new social network, are active in the community, and grow your network naturally, then I don’t have an issue with that.
Is TSU a scam? I don’t really think so. Is it a good opportunity to make money? In my opinion, not at all. But it's free to join, and people waste time on social networks anyway, so I can't complain too much!
Opportunity Breakdown
MLM Fanatics
The first thing that you will notice and that is most obvious about TSU is that it’s full of fanatics that defend their social network against any haters they find online. Very often they get violent, abusive, and hateful in the comment section (or do it via email).
This reminds me a lot of MLM. Any negative MLM review I do on my website is full of comments from people saying:
You just don’t understand.
You are an idiot
You are a scammer
I totally make money doing this
…and so on. I mean, if you really are making that much money, why are you Googling terms like “Is TSU a Scam” or “TSU Review”. Shouldn’t you be sharing content and raking in the dollars?
Instead these guys are spending their days doing crowd control making sure that everyone on the internet knows they are, in fact, making money, and there’s no way that it’s a scam. No way at all.
The Spam Factor
Everyone is annoyed by your TSU link. No, your subtle “join me if you want I don’t really care” comment doesn’t fly either. I see so many comments on any TSU review site where they just leave their referral link, hoping, praying, that someone clicks it and joins.
I don’t use Facebook much, but from what I’ve read on other reviews, link spam is quite common. I have seen it on Google+ (my main network) from time to time, but G+ is pretty good about removing spam efficiently.
If you join up with TSU, even though it may not be a scam, your friends will probably think it is. No one likes to be spammed day in, day out with links telling them how they can make money online. Know beforehand that you’ll probably get a lot of unfollows in whatever network you share this in.
Less Than Minimum Wage
At the end of the day, sharing content on a social network is going to take a lot of time, and return very little money. You CANNOT make this your full time job – not even close.
If you use the site casually, that’s great. But you’ll still only make a few cents per day. Even if you make a $1 per day, it’s still less than minimum wage, by a long shot.
I am not a fan of MLM companies, but I can see merit in some. TSU is not one of them. I have better things to do with my time than share what color Nicki Minaj’s panties are this week.
Is TSU News Legit?
One thing I wanted to comment on is whether or not the news surrounding TSU is legitimate news, or paid ads. There are many reports about TSU getting started on legitimate-looking websites like ZDNet, TechPlusMe, and Recode. They all seem to put a very positive spin on TSU, and ignore some of the negative attention surrounding the social network that’s been posted on by bloggers.
The dichotomy of what’s being reported by “official” news sites and private bloggers is a bit sketchy. In fact, most of the objectively positive articles on the news sites read very much like an advertorial or a press release.
I would not be surprised if some money changed hands to get those articles published. This is speculation on my part, and I could not find any indication that they were paid for.
Update:
Just got this spam message on Facebook today from someone I don't know. This is the type of people you find in TSU and that “biz op” type stuff attracts.
TSU VS Blogging on Your Own Domain
My main issue with TSU is that they make it seem like you can make a ton of money, but no matter which way you cut it, you’re still working for less than minimum wage. PLUS, all content is on their website!
Why not cut ‘social' from your schedule and learn how bloggers make money? Instead of sharing news articles for pennies, you could be writing your own blogs and work online full time. YOU truly own all the content and can make a lot more doing your own advertising. Best of all, there's no need to share your ad revenue 🙂
This is what I do for a living, and you can learn how I do it in my 5 day email course on affiliate marketing.
Final Review
Yeah, you can make some money but it’s not worth your time, and for me, I do not want to get involved with this type of spamming.
Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. My name is Nathaniell and I'm the owner of One More Cup of Coffee. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!
dark_invisible says
THUMBS DOWN. Don’t go there.
During 1+ year I’ve seen dozens of friends being banned, no explanation, no response from the tsu team, no, no porn posts, and their accounts are still there, maintaining the illusion of membership numbers but inaccessible to them. I no longer participate.
You are not going to make any money. You might develop some social contacts only to be cut off on a whim some nice day.
Whether it is fraud, bias or incompetence hardly matters; the end result is the same. STAY AWAY.
Nathaniell says
Thanks for the update dude. Sorry to hear that people are still having issues!
Frankie Taurus says
I completely agree, I was so excited to sign up and my first day I made six cents which was awesome to me because I just signed up and thought hey this could be great. I realize it is a bout volume. So I got my wife on board.
Here’s where I realize something is wrong.
When I sent my link to her to click and sign up, it redirects her to the mobile app where it wipes out my referral link. So I had to sign her up again after 30 minutes of figuring it out.
Then I referred my uncle and had the exact same problem. this time he signed up as his own referral. Again my link did not work. Seems fishy that this has happened twice.
I even stayed on the phone with my uncle to guide him through the whole process and it still did not work correctly.
So to me it seems like the founder of the site is making all the money and the users are getting a little trickle of the percentage just to seem legit.
I could be wrong or maybe I’m doing something wrong. But it seems way too difficult to get legitimate children underneath you.
I hope I’m wrong, I really wanted to make something of this site. Thank You
Mike Pugh says
I honestly liked your review, but since you’re not really on TSU as a member it’s much more of a one sided view and perspective of it all. I personally been on TSU since it began. With any new start-up there will be ups and downs.
I actually invited some of my close friends and family to TSU and knowing that the whole spam thing would possibly become a deterrent and issue with them. However I did my research and made sure to properly inform them as to what they would be joining and done it on the phone with many of them. I also was part of the community for at least a full week to a month before I invited many of them.
This did make a huge difference. However after a month time I chose not to invite any more people, and mainly to see what would occur with the number of people that I had landed successful invites. Regretfully over time they all had up and quit. I was the sole survivor out there on TSU and I’m still out there. I am also a professional blogger, but I took a long leave of absence from it all after Google Panda and Penguin had hit us all.
TSU actually is a highly evolved social economy style network today. We support charity organizations and many friendships have been made on a more global scale that I was never really able to do out on places like Facebook. On the note of spam and spammers. Yes of course we have them out there and mainly because of Facebook and Twitter where these types of people learned it all from. Mark Zuckerberg himself was a cheating spammer in his Harvard days and also stole the idea of creating The Facebook from some college folks he had met and exchange words with.
So you see yeah he has earned Billions, but none of it was done fairly when he first got started. I commend the owners of TSU for being straight forward with people, the public, their members, and everyone who ever chose to join their platform. As it’s not a perfect world out there by no means, but it beats the closed network type borders that many networks create that lock us out from communicating fairly with people around the globe who may wish to communicate to us. That’s what I love most about TSU. It’s all about connectedness to me aka hyper connectivity. I do fight the spam out there though in the comment sections day in and day out and landed a pretty decent admin position there on TSU that’s actually a paid position that opened up for a brief time like any job offer or company that needs administrators. The difference though out there is I own my network and my channel as long as I abide by the TSU terms of use and community guidelines.
I firmly believe they are headed the right direction today and soon will be opening moderator opportunities for folks who know the rules and wish to enforce them to limit the spam, fraudulent activities, trolling etc…. This to me will become the total game changer if they pull this off as they plan to pay the moderators. I’m willing and ready for what’s next as we just broke 5 million members about 3 weeks back.
Amazing times up ahead, and again TSU isn’t a perfect site, everything you mentioned was true at one time or another, but they are evolving for the better and so it’s been an amazing journey. I do hope more positive minded folks decide to set up shop out there as we could use more positive minded types who really are willing to make it happen in a fully monetized arena online. So yeah it’s not for everyone, but some folks will find ways to make TSU work for them with the right attitude in mind, and methodology to the online madness as not a single network of the social kind online is perfect. I’m the CloudExplorer out there and elsewhere FPCVirtual. Been doing this online thing since 2010 as well, but actually started in 2009 as a beginner entrepreneur. YouTube has been the place though where I excelled the most and I’m so glad all these opportunities are out here today. Meeting good folks like yourself, you know the level headed types is a true blessing, thanks for writing this blog post.
Liam says
^ tbf even if he got $5 .. That’s $5 more than Facebook have even shared with him. And if he can’t “cash out” until $100 and never uses the site again, at least he can donate that $5 to charity and help change the world. I see Tsu as a platform in which you can reach a widescale, global audience, in such a short space of time to share your content and interact with like minded people who share your interests What’s the fuss?
Nathaniell says
The fuss is that they make it sound more profitable than it actually is. Whatever man, spend your time how you want.