Looking at Time’s very unscientific top ten list of the most commonly broken New Year’s resolutions from last year, we realized a virtual phone system could really contribute to sticking to most of the goals (at least for a little while longer).

1. Lose Weight and Get Fit

• Who hasn’t had this New Year’s resolution at least once? But you are a busy person. Between your business and your family and friends, there’s very little time for you to focus on you. There just isn’t enough time to fit a workout in. A virtual phone system could help in a couple of ways. (1) As an affordable solution, you’ll have extra cash to spend on a gym membership or get started with creating your own home gym. (2) A virtual phone system means you don’t have to be in your office. You could work from home a couple of days every week and spend the time you’d normally spend on commuting, working out. The calls can be forwarded to any phone you want.

2. Quit Smoking

• We don’t have any features planned to help you quit smoking, but we’re in favor of this resolution anyway.

3. Learn Something New

• More time and money means more opportunity to do whatever you want. Don’t forget if your business is ready to upgrade from a virtual phone system, our hosted VoIP solution offers fantastic rates for international calls in case your goal is to learn a new language.

4. Eat Healthier Diet

• Busy people don’t always have time to prepare a healthy meal. After a long day, you’re tired and you know fast food is bad but it’s there, and it’s easy. A poor diet will keep you tired and negatively affect your health and motivation. Working from home would allow for more time to prepare something healthy and skip the triple bacon cheeseburger… mmm, bacon.

5. Get Out of Debt and Save Money

• You get the idea. Save money with a virtual phone system. These write themselves!

6. Spend More Time with Family

• You have options. Hire your family and spend more time with them at the office. Though comparing a sloppy report to a sloppy bathroom is probably not something your other employees will want to hear about. With a virtual phone system, work from home. Taking a break from work with your family is better than taking it with the new guy who smells kind of weird.

7. Travel to New Places

• Have you heard of coworking locations? As we already stated, a virtual phone system liberates you from the office. If your cell phone gets a signal, your calls can be forwarded to it. I hear Puerto Rico is very nice this time of year.

8. Be Less Stressed

• Go to Puerto Rico and try to feel stressed.

9. Volunteer

• This is a great resolution. There are so many worthwhile nonprofits that could use some help. Whether or not you decide a virtual phone system is right for you, hopefully you’ll be able to find time to help others.

10. Drink Less

• You’ll have more time and money. If that’s a problem for your drinking, we’re not going to be of much help. If, however, that helps your drinking, cheers!

What is your New Year’s resolution? Have you had any from this list before?

Our first feature is of Carl E. Bayer, President and Founder of ScentedTowel.com.

ScentedTowel.com was founded in April of 2011 and offers a number of different travel products. Most notably, they are known for their Pre-Moistened 100% Cotton Refreshment Towels. Their towels offer first class luxurious refreshment even when you’re not flying first class. Customers can purchase the eco-friendly towels individually, in bulk sets, or even get a private label created with their own logo or custom message printed on the packaging.

Tell us about yourself and how you came up with the idea for ScentedTowel.com.

Carl Bayer: In my early 20s I was diagnosed with kidney disease. As things progressed, it eventually got worse. I started dialysis back in 2008 of April when I did peritoneal dialysis. That allowed me to travel and still enjoy doing the things that I really enjoy doing.

In January, as I started having lots of complications, I had to have multiple surgeries to help the draining process. During the manual dialysis, you’re hooked up to a machine for 10 hours a night while it fills you with 3,000 mls of fluid. Then it dwells for a few hours, drains it out and repeats the process throughout the night. I was having problems draining, and the fluid was just accumulating. The doctors had to do multiple surgeries to try and fix it.

The last surgery they did nicked the peritoneum, and from there I had to go on emergency hemodialysis which completely changed my life. I basically stopped working all together. I had to leave my job. Then in April, I got a call; they had a donor that had passed away from a head trauma, and his family was donating his organs. I was one of the lucky ones.

That was life changing and gave me a renewed sense of what I wanted to do with my life. I thought travel is really what I love to do, and I’ve always been looking for a high-quality luxurious travel product like this that offers that little bit of extra comfort and serenity. Why not go for it?

Who else is involved in ScentedTowel.com?

Carl Bayer: I have a couple of friends who are commission sales people. We’re growing pretty rapidly; it’s kind of intense. We had a recent promotion that featured on Oct. 21st on ABC 7 in San Francisco, where we gave away 3,000 of our Lemon Scented Towels. The exposure was just incredible. The response from the 5:30 news was unbelievable. I remember watching the orders come in on my iPad, the tally kept going up. In the first ten minutes, we had 2,000 orders. It was a great offer. From that, we’ve gotten lots of responses from larger companies and distributors who want to work with us.

What do you think the future holds for ScentedTowel.com?

Carl Bayer: We definitely can see continued growth. We want to expand our products into different scented towels as well and with a variety of sizes. We’re also going to branch off into some hard to find travel-sized products.

How are you reaching out to your customers?

Carl Bayer: We’re reaching out socially. We just started our fan base on Twitter, I think we have 550 fans there. Our Facebook is starting to grow, and we’re also getting other bloggers interested in us and sending them samples.

How is FreedomVoice helping ScentedTowel.com?

Carl Bayer: I found you by doing a Google search, actually. We were starting up and I needed a professional front for my phone service. I can’t use my home number when meeting with high-end clients. You guys were a quick, easy solution which I absolutely fell in love with. I can see how we can grow with you as we grow as well. One of the first things we did was have our auto attendant professionally recorded using one of your voice talents. That gives us instant credibility and helps us put forth the best image when dealing with clients of any size. We also set up call forwarding to make sure we can always be reached, and we use the online faxing feature quite a bit.

What were the challenges getting started?

Carl Bayer: For me it was actually pretty easy, surprisingly. We were able to get going pretty quickly. One of the things I didn’t want to invest in heavily was a phone system, and that’s why your solution was absolutely perfect. The startup cost, for the features you offer, is definitely a great value. I love the fact that it sends my messages to my iPhone or iPad or whatever mobile device I’m carrying, and I can listen to it wherever I am. We also did some crowdsourcing. We turned to LogoTournament to create our logo, and Hatchwise is another one we use to do some graphic design work.

What are some of your favorite hobbies?

Carl Bayer: Travel is a favorite hobby of mine. I really like international locations like Taipei, Taiwan and tropical locations like Hawaii. Right now everything is focused on the business, but that’s one of my main hobbies.

What is your favorite color?

Carl Bayer: It’s always been blue.

Do you have any tips for someone else getting started with their own business?

Carl Bayer: Well, you can never have enough money to start up. Everything costs more than you expect. Just make sure you have enough capital. Keep at it, and don’t get discouraged. We started out kind of slowly, but all of a sudden things are taking off. Find creative ways to market yourself. For instance, the promotion with ABC 7 cost us nothing; we just reached out to them and said we’d love to be a part of your segment and sent them samples.

Visit ScentedTowel.com and connect on their Facebook and Twitter pages!

But beyond your napping “sleeping” habits and your personal preference to shower/shave/get dressed, the technology you deploy also plays a big role in whether your operation gets off the ground. Here are five of the top reasons you should consider using an 800 number virtual phone system for your home-based business, instead of just relying on your personal home or cell phone numbers…

1. Look & Sound Professional

Giving potential clients and customers your home or cell phone number is the easiest way to betray the size of your home-based business. Even if you’re borderline superhero when it comes to your entrepreneurial powers, you’re still going to lose opportunities if companies are afraid you don’t have the resources to take care of their needs.

An 800 number gets your foot in the door. With a professional-sounding auto attendant, voicemail service, and call forwarding to your home or cell phone, you get a professional image that reduces customer anxiety while still fitting your lifestyle. It’s not about tricking your customers — it’s about making a good first impression to earn the opportunity to show off what you can really do.

2. Nationwide Reach

Many entrepreneurs that work from home reach a nationwide audience via the Internet. To get anywhere with this kind of online business, you need to appear accessible. If you are advertising your contact phone number as a local number in Florida, you might have a tough time convincing customers in California that you’re the right business to take care of their needs. The problem is more than the customer having to dial long distance. If you seem far away, your potential customers might not feel secure giving you their business. Since 800 numbers are non-geographic, they immediately alleviate this problem and give you the appeal of a nationwide, fully-accessible business.

3. Maintain Your Privacy, Sanity

Just because you work out of your home, doesn’t mean you need to turn your personal life inside out and give up your private information to everyone with whom you do business. Having an 800 number that forwards to your other phone lines lets you keep your business life separate by maintaining the privacy of your home phone and cell phone numbers. Best of all, you can avoid 24/7 burnout by setting your 800 number call forwarding hours and days to draw a line as to when you’re “in the office” to take calls and when you need to be done for the day.

4. Prevent Missed Opportunities

As I mentioned before, one of the challenges of working from home is managing your professional and personal lives. On a micro scale, this can mean little interruptions in the middle of the day, like needing to leave home to pick up children from school or running time-sensitive errands. If you can’t avoid these tasks, you need to at least mitigate their impact on running your business.

With an 800 number, you get two quick benefits that keep you connected on the go. The first is Follow-Me-Live call forwarding that can track you down at multiple phone numbers to make a connection, such as your home office, cell phone, or personal home phone numbers. And if a missed call does reach your voicemail, it’s not the end of the world. With voicemail-to-email, your messages are delivered as audio file attachments to your email address, and you can even be alerted of these messages via text message. This gives you the ability to quickly return missed calls before they turn into missed opportunities.

5. Online Management Tools

Virtual phone systems are all about efficiency, getting more done with fewer resources and in less time. To keep you ahead of the curve, FreedomVoice 800 numbers are kept easy-to-manage with the WebLink Internet Control Panel. This secure, online back-office gives you total access to check your messages, change your settings, update your account information, run reports, and much more — from anywhere you have Internet access! With intuitive controls, you’re in control of your virtual phone system 24/7.

What are you waiting for? Get an 800 number for your home business today!

When you secure a toll free number through a service provider, you have certain protections afforded to you by the FCC that help you keep that number in the event you change service providers, or even change businesses. Today we’ll cover that protection, some pitfalls to watch out for, and how to go about changing providers should the need arise.

Your Protection, A Brief History

Set the WABAC Machine to May 1st, 1993. This is the cutoff date set in 1991 by the FCC for 800 numbers (the only toll free number prefix at the time) to be made “portable,” such that customers can change carriers / service providers without changing their toll free number. The portability of numbers serves two purposes. First, it breaks the grip companies like AT&T had on 800 numbers in the decades prior and encourages greater competition. This inspires service providers to provide only the best service to earn their customers’ loyalty. Second, toll free number portability protects the investment a business makes in promoting and advertising their number as part of their brand.

Transfers take place by changing a toll free number’s “Responsible Organization”, or RespOrg. When you’re ready to transfer a number to a new service provider, simply contact that new provider and they’ll provide you with a form that you can fill out to start the transfer process. It’s usually a good idea to contact your old service provider to double-check your account information when filling out the form and make sure your account is in good standing, so that there’s nothing to stop your transfer from going through. You don’t need to mention that you’re transferring the number away. In fact, I recommend not. Less reputable toll free number service providers have been known to go out of their way to impede transfers if they have advanced warning.

Why to Avoid “Shared Use”

One of the more notorious pitfalls that can cause you to lose the time and effort you’ve spent promoting your toll free number is unwittingly using a “shared use” number.

Time and again, we at FreedomVoice hear horror stories from businesses that turn to us after being put through the ringer by “shared use” toll free number service providers. A shared use line is exactly what you might think – there are multiple businesses dividing up (often geographically) a single toll free number. The purpose is typically to get access to some kind of rare, attractive vanity toll free number spelling. The problem is, when the time comes for you to change service providers or to grow to a nationwide reach, you don’t own the toll free number and can’t take it with you. Everything you’ve built with that number is now lost, and you have to start all over again.

Our advice? Stay away from shared use. Find a toll free number you love for your business, and own it.

Safeguarding Your Toll Free Number

It’s always important to read the fine print when signing on with a new service provider / carrier to make sure you’re not getting into a toll free number black hole. If there’s any doubt about whether you’ll keep your number should you choose to leave, don’t be afraid to ask. And watch out for extensive “transfer away” fees. Some providers charge prohibitive costs as penalties to move a number away from their service.

While your rights to keep your number are in most cases secure, certain actions on your part might give even an honest toll free number service provider leverage to deny your transfer request. For example, if you have a sizeable unpaid balance, transferring your number away isn’t a means of dodging your bill. A service provider can, and likely will, refuse your transfer if your account is not in “good standing” at the time of the transfer.

Also, should you choose to transfer your number away from a service provider, don’t cancel your service with them prematurely. Wait until the transfer is complete, or you run the risk of having your transfer request rejected.

800 numbers have grown increasingly scarce for a while – and for that reason every toll free number service provider values them with some kind of one-time premium. Frankly, the upgrade is worth it if the price is right – it’s sure to pay for itself. To say nothing bad about an 866, 877, or 888 prefix toll free number, for my money I’d go for the original, the true value. We think you should to, and to help you get there we’ve dropped our 800 number price to just $10.

That’s right – for the cost of a couple lattes, you get the added value of kicking your virtual phone system into overdrive with an 800 prefix number that’s going to be a rock-solid cornerstone for your advertising. That “8-0-0″ gives your company an instant lift in trust level, a more professional appearance, and virtually eliminates customer misdials. It’s rare in the business world that you find something that costs so little and provides so much in return.

So if you’re looking to get a toll free number for your business, be sure not to miss this golden opportunity. Go get your own 800 number for the low cost of $10 – and that’s after you get a chance to try FreedomVoice service free for 15 days. If you’re already a FreedomVoice customer and want to take this opportunity to switch to an 800 number or add some more numbers to your service, give us a call at 1-800-477-1477 ext. 2 or email us at support@freedomvoice.com and we’ll get you set up.

This week we’ll cover three ways the features of your virtual phone system can cut down the time between when a caller dials your toll free number and when they reach someone that can help.

1. A “Get-to-the-Point” Auto Attendant

Your pre-recorded auto attendant greeting from FreedomVoice welcomes your callers and directs them where to go. For new customers wanting to learn more about your business, this can be a great resource to provide helpful information before they reach someone live – or even answer their question without them needing to speak to someone. For frustrated callers, this greeting can be seen as a barrier between them and getting their problem solved.

To help both types of callers get what they need, it’s important to record your auto attendant greeting in a way that properly prioritizes information. After a brief introduction, include an immediate action prompt like, “if you know the extension of the party you are trying to reach, you may dial it at any time,” or “to hear a directory of available extensions, dial 8 at any time.” Then start to list some shortcut options for your most popular extensions, like ”dial 1 for Sales, dial 2 for Support, or dial 3 for Billing.” This helps your more impatient callers get what they want quickly, and then lets you spend the rest of your auto attendant greeting covering additional information like new promotions, driving directions, changes in store hours, or how to reach your website.

2. Simultaneous Ring for Direct Extensions

All FreedomVoice virtual phone systems come with ACD routing, a feature that lets you set custom rules and rotations for how your calls are forwarded live to your and your team. One of these rules is Simultaneous Ring, which will dial multiple call forwarding numbers at the same time and connect with whichever answers first. This makes Simultaneous Ring perfect for direct or personal extensions. Instead of your caller waiting on hold while we roll through your home office phone, your desk phone at work, and your cell phone to try and track you down, all of your phones trigger at the same time. Your caller gets connected with you immediately wherever you may be.

This also gives you the freedom to choose how you want to take the call. If you’re about to step out of the office and your phones begin to ring, you can choose to answer the call on your cell phone and take the call with you on the go. And vice versa – if you’re just getting into the office, you can take the call from the comfort and clarity of your office phone instead of relying on your cell phone reception or battery life.

3. Managing Your Call Queues

Call queues are a powerful tool to help you manage the peaks in your call volume by keeping callers rotating on hold until a representative is available. But this feature can also be very dangerous, because an improperly managed call queue can result in on-hold times that anger your callers and set the stage for an unpleasant call experience. FreedomVoice provides several tools to help you manage your call queues, including real-time monitoring and the ability to set a maximum hold duration.

Real-time monitoring lets you see how large your call queues get during your peak hours and days, which can help you manage break and lunch periods and staff appropriately throughout the week. Maximum hold duration puts a limit on how long your callers can remain listening to hold music and waiting for a representative until they are sent to voicemail. While it can be tempting to set this to a really long time, we typically recommend against that. Without a reasonable limit for hold duration, you run the risk of piling up a backlog of frustrated callers. It’s usually better to let callers clear out of your queue, leave a message, and allow you to return their call outside of peak hours. Find a balance that works for your business between answering the most calls and keeping callers on hold for the shortest amount of time.

Also, if you’re using call queues and aren’t available to take calls 24 hours a day, be absolutely sure you’ve set your business hours on your call forwarding numbers. While this is good advice even if you’re not using call queues, leaving a call queue live outside of business hours can mean your callers sitting through long hold times and going to voicemail with no chance of their call being answered.

Here’s a breakdown of the benefits of each type of virtual phone number to help you make an informed choice.

Local Virtual Phone Numbers

The main feature (or drawback) of a local virtual phone number is that it betrays the size and scope of your business. To a potential customer, your local number is indistinguishable from a cell phone number until they call and hear your professional virtual phone system. The key is to know how and when that small size appearance is appropriate and beneficial.

In many types of business, the appearance of local presence is crucial to gaining new business. These verticals typically include areas of our lives where we place a large amount of trust in the companies we choose to work with, such as insurance, real estate, banking, legal counsel, and health care. These can also include areas where we want to feel like we’re giving back to our community, such as local retail shops or restaurants. We want to know that these companies aren’t big, faceless corporations and that there’s someone nearby that is working for us and shares our concerns and interests. In these cases, a local virtual phone number is better than a toll free number for establishing a lasting connection with a local community and its residents.

Toll Free Numbers

A toll free number immediately suggests to callers that you are an established and professional business, especially if you have an attractive 800 number or vanity toll free number. It implies a nationwide reach and the size, stability, and resources necessary to support that reach — even if reality is closer to a small local office of dedicated professionals or a savvy entrepreneur working from home. A toll free number helps your business stand with the pack against your larger competitors, getting your foot in the door so customers can see your unique qualities and value.

A toll free number also offers a scalable one-number solution. Your business might be tied to one area now, but what if you expand? With local numbers, every time you open an office or simply start doing business in a new city, you’re going to need to get another number for that area. And a new number could mean all-new marketing materials, such as fliers or business cards. Toll free numbers work nationwide, meaning you can scale your business up and expand anywhere across the country without needing to change one thing about how your customers reach you over the phone.

So Which Is It?

Ultimately, the decision comes down to perception. If there’s value to your business in being seen as smaller, more personal, and more in-touch with a local community, then a local virtual phone number is the right choice. If you’re up against larger competitors or have plans to expand, you’re better off with the professional image and scalability of a toll free number.

This new site and blog were a positive first step in helping our outer image reflect our inner quality, and we’ve furthered that with a brand new logo for a new decade. Are we just trying to be more cutting-edge?

As a wise man once said, “Do or do not. There is no try.” And we’ve been doing since day one, pushing the envelope of business communications. Not content to run with the pack, we’ve constantly rolled out improved virtual phone system features and innovative solutions like the FreedomIQ Hosted VoIP PBX and even the ill-fated Newber iPhone app. Where we’ve succeeded, we’ve grown. Where we’ve stumbled, we’ve learned.

This new logo not only represents where we’ve been, but also where we’re headed. In that vein, allow me to set the record straight – our logo may be getting a facelift, but our core values aren’t changing. Our commitment to quality, to affordable service, and to the success of our customers is as solid as it’s ever been. Think of this new logo as a badge of commitment to you, our customers, to keep pressing forward with new technologies designed with your business in mind.

We chose this logo out of countless alternatives because it really spoke to us as being representative of our services: bold, efficient, and easy to understand. So – love it, hate it? Tell us what you think.

Our CEO, Eric Thomas, is pretty excited about the program, as are the rest of us. Here is what he had to say.

“Our new affiliate program has it all. We have a dedicated and experienced affiliate manager ready and willing to help, our program offers competitive commissions, paying out on both leads and sales, and we offer highly optimized landing pages that have excellent conversion rates.”

The programs dedicated affiliate manager is none other than Tim Paulino, an Internet marketing expert with over a decade of experience in affiliate marketing. Tim also has considerable background marketing FreedomVoice services, which makes him a great resource for those looking to beef up their product knowledge.

And that is really Paulino’s main objective, to answer questions and guide affiliates towards success. Being well versed in blogging and social media as well, Paulino has already taken measures to add important program information to his FVSuccess Affiliate Blog. In addition, Paulino is offering information through his Twitter feed and is available to connect via LinkedIn.

Paulino knows a thing or two about marketing. Here is what he had to say about the program.

“The FreedomVoice Affiliate Program provides Internet marketers with the tools needed to sell and make commissions off three excellent products. I would not be a part of this program if I didn’t think it had tremendous potential. We are encouraging all online marketers to take a hard look at our offering and the opportunities they present.”

The FreedomVoice Affiliate Program is dedicated to high paying commissions and providing excellent resources for affiliates to utilize. The program is already offering some really cool banners, text links, landing pages, and videos for affiliates to utilize. There is even website text available.

But FreedomVoice will not stop here. The program will continue to generate new material to ensure each affiliate ecommerce structure is refined to its maximum potential for conversions and commission to be earned. You can count on us for that.

When asked about the product offerings, FreedomVoice provided the following brief product descriptions.

FreedomVoice Toll Free Number Service
As a virtual business phone solution designed to help small and home-based businesses present a professional image, FreedomVoice Toll Free Number Service includes a nationwide toll free number, an automated attendant greeting to answer calls, follow-me-live call forwarding, multiple voicemail boxes, Internet faxing, and more.

AdTrakker Call Capture
AdTrakker is a lead generation phone service built primarily for the real estate industry. AdTrakker provides real estate agents with a toll free number hotline and 100 advertising extension recordings that they can use to provide callers with 24/7 automated information, including listing details, free industry reports, buying and selling tips for prospects, and more.

FaxFreedom Internet Faxing
This virtual faxing solution gives entrepreneurs and small businesses the ability to send and receive faxes online. The service provides the customer with a local or toll free virtual phone number for dedicated faxing, along with an easy-to-use web interface for checking new faxes and creating outbound faxes directly from documents on their computer.

Internet marketers who are interested in becoming a FreedomVoice affiliate can learn more by visiting the FreedomVoice affiliate website.

In this webinar, Candice Malmstrom, Director of Marketing at FreedomVOICE, and Tim Paulino, FreedomVOICE Affiliate Manger, discuss the program and give inside tips for potential affiliates.

Learn more about the program on the FreedomVOICE Affiliate Program Website!