I do not know AMR or their managers personally, but have had quite some email exchanges with one of the managers for the Spanish Country Manager Position (fully on commission base, and focus on customer acquisition), which I will not even request for, simply due to  time reasons, as I have just closed a nice deal and have to take care of my customers first. But I am still considering the Affiliate Management Consultant (AMC) role, -which will start in October/November and should not take up too much of my personal time-, and will also ask my employees to do some of the Website testing. I have a skype call some day of the coming week. I will keep you posted if I feel that there are any important changes or news you should be aware of.

To me, AMR and the related offerings seem to be a new, but real business. Lot’s of the processes have not been fully defined yet, but as far as I understand, Website testers, apart of doing the tests will be offered vouchers from AMR customers. These vouchers will allow the testers, if they wish, to purchase AMR customers’ products at a discounted price. There is no obligation whatsoever.

How will AMR make its money? My understanding is that AMS’s income streams come form the following sources:

• The affiliate program that they will be offering their customers, where AMR affiliates will be promoting AMR customer products,
• a percentage of the vouchers sales and
• an increasing and diversified offering on the website tester’s side. The Website testing will start initially with user experience testing, and in the near future may be extended to more high value testing offerings like load performance, usability, Dearch Engine Optimization and alike.

How will Website testers and members make their money? Website testers will get a fixed payment, amount that based on the quality and level of tests they perform. Then all member of the individual tester’s group share a 10% of their respective group results. Finally, if the member promotes the program and manages to get members signed up in his team, the he will get another 10% of their income, down to 10 levels. This sounds a lot, but isn’t really, until the whole groups starts making money.

So the main question is, will there be jobs for all website testers that have signed up? In my opinion this is almost impossible, especially at the beginning. On the other hand, there will be loads of members that signed up as  Website testers, but who will not do any testing and only want to get the residual income by promoting the program or not doing anything (but receiving vouchers). My guess is that the ones who really want to do some work will be less than 30%. So there is some perspective for this group of people on the medium to long term.

The main question then is; Why does AMR need so many testers (members), is AMR mainly harvesting email addresses to SPAM all members later on? Lets see… Nowadays one can purchase (opt-in) emails for pennies. Lots of those are fake (entered on purpose by the owner), and they tend not to be very targeted. But as AMR does not seem to be targeting any specific groups, this may not be too important. Then there are programs that capable of harvesting hundreds of thousands of emails from the web, or more sophisticated ones like SEPCON (see my review at http://sepcon-emaillistbuilding-review.com ) that gets even millions of emails from users that (supposingly) opted in at some point in time. So AMR, with their current process, could get at least valid emails. This talks in favor of the skeptical ones.

The next question is; what will AMR be using the emails for? Let’s go back to the beginning… They need the emails to keep you up to date on the vouchers offered and create your account for accessing those vouchers and the Website tester portal. The base of AMR’s business is the combined offering of Affiliates, Vouchers and Website testers (and I think in that order) to their customers. At the beginning their principal asset are the hundreds of thousands of members, which is why they need so many “Website Testers” In my opinion they will not SPAM us, particularly because CAN-SPAMM laws are very strict, and you know WHO is sending you those messages. It is:

   Alpha Market Research, Inc.
   3651 Lindell Road
   Suite D317
   Las Vegas, NV
   89103
   Tel. +1 (702) 347 6767
   Email service[AT]alphamarketresearch.com

They will  also need keep us happy (with vouchers and future payments) in order to make us stay on their list. This is very different from all those anonymous Spammers, who have no relationship with you and do not depend on you. Well, now you may say they could use our email independently from the AMR business or even sell them. You might be right, but again, it’s so easy to get email addresses, that I am more inclined to believe that they won’t waste this important asset.

As a final comment, as for what I have seen in the emails that I had with a member of the AMR management (for privacy reasons I can’t copy their content here),  I have  reached the conclusion that AMR  is a real business and being among the early adopter gives you certain advantages. In the end; what risk am I taking? Receive one more (SPAM) email and perform one Website test to see whether I get paid.  

To me it’s worth a try. Please let the other readers know your thoughts too.
I wish you the very best!
Andre Klein