Websites are one of the strongest ways to build revenue with the affiliate program, and can be used stand-alone or to improve the effect of any email, newsletter, or social networking methods. By providing a standard portal which you can refer people through that contains some information about Virtual PBX and invites people to try it out, you always have a base for any affiliate endeavors and links.

By creating a multiple-page site using some of the linking and keyword strategies provided here, you can draw people to your website on a continual basis, and get paid for anyone who signs up with us through your efforts.The key to making an effective website is to have customer-focused, unique content. A good example is a review or an informative comparison site, which provides basic education for people looking into getting new phone service about how Virtual PBX can go above and beyond the alternatives. By bringing the ranking of the website up so that it will appear quickly in appropriate searches, then you only need light maintenance to get steady traffic.

Another great way to get traffic is to post a regular blog with good information. Check out our blog content from the link at the left for articles you can use.

When putting together an affiliate website that will refer leads and customers back to Virtual PBX, it’s important to make sure that your website is going to be found and read. Whether you’re putting together a new affiliate website or adding information about us to an existing one, a good linking strategy can help to make sure your affiliate website gets more hits. Make sure you give a look at the section on keyword strategy to help you determine what search terms you’re focusing on, then make a linking strategy using the guidelines below.

Whenever you use an important term, also make it a link. By having a good volume of links, your affiliate website gets considered more ‘connected’, and rises in page rank. So don’t just include one link at the bottom, include them throughout. When you talk about major Virtual PBX features, you can link to the Virtual PBX page on that feature. When you use the term Virtual PBX, by making it a link back to our homepage you can provide more depth to your website, which increases its value with modern search engines. And most importantly, make sure you’ve got links between all your own webpages. If you’re doing a site about useful business services, then try to have your other pages talk about Virtual PBX and link back to your Virtual PBX affiliate website. Also have your Virtual PBX page mention what other services compliment it well – then make a series of links to those pages.

Link placement is an important consideration. Make sure that the words you have as the link are the same as the keywords for the page that they are linking to. So if the keyword term on a page is “Hosted PBX”, use the text “Hosted PBX” in links that go to that page, rather than “click here” or some other term. However, not every such line needs to be a link – usually only include one per keyword, two for a large website where you want links both at the top and bottom. In this case, use of banners or graphical links may be a better choice.

Make sure that your links have context. If you just post a link to our Greeting Manager feature, then write a line or two explaining that the greeting manager helps businesses to keep track of what customers first hear when they call your VirtualPBX account. By doing so, search engines will recognize the link as being part of your website’s content – otherwise, they’ll discard the link as unrelated to the page.

Repurpose your content. If you’ve already written content, you don’t have to start over. Just go back through what you have, and change a few sentences. Incorporate some links, and include an additional page or two. Also make sure you cache the pages using standard webmaster tools, and you’ll start to see improvements in your page rank within a day.

When marketing any product through the internet, including a phone service, it is useful to have a keyword strategy. Keywords are usually made up of one to four words strung together that a web surfer would type into a search engine to find something on the web. For instance, someone looking for a virtual phone service might type in: a) phone service, b) virtual phone service, c) virtual pbx, or almost anything else involving phones. People who want to get the premier virtual phone service, Virtual PBX, will need you to help them find you. So, if you’re going to put up web pages about phone service, you’ll want to use the right keywords so that web searchers can find you. Build your web pages around these keywords and, over time, search engines will begin to find your site. It isn’t instant or automatic, so you’ll have to be patient, and you should probably do some reading or take some courses that will help.You can’t just use the same terms everyone else does, or you’ll get lost in the noise generated by others. Also, you have to be careful not to use terms that are too broad, like “phone”. To help you with this task, we’ve prepared a list of phone service keywords that seem to draw a lot of traffic. Descriptions of these keywords can be found by clicking on any of them, or by visiting our Virtual Phone Service Keywords list.

As you can see, some phone service keywords are short and generic, such as “pbx”, others are longer or more specific such as small office phone system, or business phone services. Generally, longer terms are less likely to have competition. Whichever terms you decide to use, make sure they go into the title bar, meta-tags, headlines, and subheads on your web pages. They will also need to get used a lot in the content on the pages. It is best to make a different page for each keyword you want the search engines to find.

Much more dynamic than a standard website, using direct communication like email and message boards requires a high degree of personalization. When used effectively, you can get a direct message to a group of people more likely to consider and investigate the offer. When used poorly, you just wind up flooding people with advertisements that turn them away from you.

Obviously, Virtual PBX doesn’t support any kind of spamming practices, so all communication has to be tailored to the people or locations you’re contacting. Always consider who you’re contacting, what the target audience would be interested in, and make sure any comments are relevant, rather than unsolicited. One good example is to use message boards relevant to your business, and mention that other people in similar lines of business could benefit from using Virtual PBX the same way you have. It’s good to also build at least a basic, one-page website that you can link to for more information, and which will also include your affiliate link so that you can get credit for the referral instead of linking directly in the forum or email. That extra level of depth can greatly improve your apparent credibility.

Important tools and resources here would be the text clips and some small banners, as well as perhaps a link to a video demo. Since forum posts and email tend to have less content than a full website and are perused more quickly than newsletters, make sure you open up by talking about the audience and subject, then lead quickly to why Virtual PBX should be used by them. This sort of approach will greatly increase the amount of positive attention your messages receive.

If you send out periodic newsletters and emails, or if you maintain a business blog, you can include banners and text clips to refer your readers through the Virtual PBX affiliate program in order to increase your revenue. While these tend to be harder to start up from scratch, even a brief mention can attract a great deal of interest.

Since people who read newsletters tend to be specifically looking for interesting information, starting with a value statement is usually best. We have numerous text bites that you can customize to fit your particular newsletter, as well as several graphics you can add to increase interest.

If you want to make the most of what attention your newsletter comments on Virtual PBX receives, including a small website that provides extra details and links to some of our information can help people to think over how they can use the service. And remember to inform readers that there’s a free trial, so that they can see for themselves how useful we can be.