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Airtasker Desparately Seeking Links

Airtasker, Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer - people starting a bookkeeping business or digital marketing business

Airtasker is an Australian success story in the Gig-economy for individuals who want their own micro business doing odd jobs for other people. Just like Uber, Ebay and other online marketplaces they leverage their digital marketing and brand to help individuals find clients and customers – for a fee. 

Airtasker and marketplaces are a great place for people who want to start their own business but these systems fail when a better alternative comes along.

Continue reading Airtasker Desparately Seeking Links

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Advanced Xero Training Course Workbook for Cashflow, Budgeting and ROI is now available for Immediate download

Advanced Certificate in Xero Cash-flow, Reporting, Budgets, ROI and Credit Management

This Advanced Xero training workbook BUNDLE follows on from the BAS course case study of Jerry’s Messy Startup and continues Jerry Lames small business endeavours for The Next Quarter.

You’ll learn how to import transaction data for 3 months of bank statement activity and produce advanced financial reports to learn about and interpret the financial results for his business.

Advanced Certificate in Xero Cash-flow, Reporting, Budgets, ROI and Credit Management

This Advanced Xero Course workbook goes deeper into understanding the financial results of bad business decisions on cashflow and credit management. Many small business owners use all of the money in their bank account because they see it is there and available to them when they can instead chose options that help their cashflow.

Jerry uses digital marketing to find clients for his various businesses and in particular uses HiPages to attract leads. HiPages is a project bidding site just like Airtasker, Bark and ServiceSeeking and this case study looks at whether you are better off getting your own website and using Google Ads to attract people to your business directly.

I’ve written about project bidding websites a few times in the past and am not a huge fan for various reasons. See some of the articles I’ve written about project bidding websites.

Don’t get me wrong, project bidding websites are handy and cheap compared to creating your own website and running Google Ads campaigns but the main winner is the project bidding websites themselves.

Bella interviewed some EzyLearn course graduates and one of the interviews with Jo-Anne, a Registered BAS Agent in Melbourne, revealed a great way to use Bark.com when you’re starting a bookkeeping business.

In this case study Jerry buys a small warehouse for his business so he doesn’t have to bring clients to his house and we explore alternative ways that this “capital purchase” could have occurred.

Buy your copy of the Advanced Xero Course in Cashflow, Budgets and Return on Investment Workbook

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Learning Xero Will Help You Run An Online Business

Intuit QuickBooks Online mobile application superior to Xero Accounting smartphone app - online training courses EzyLearn

Let’s face it, when you can manage your finances from anywhere, using your phone to scan receipts and Xero Accounting to code them and store them in the cloud one of the hardest parts of managing a business is taken care of. 

We’ve all been able to call, text and email from our mobile phones and use online marketing tools like Google Ads and Facebook for social media so when you finally get your back office tasks migrated to the cloud it’s easy right? Well, that’s what the marketing hype says anyway, but things aren’t that rosy really, are they? Continue reading Learning Xero Will Help You Run An Online Business

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Nice Looking but Crappy Websites are PERFECT to Test Your Staff

Digital Marketing Training Course Seminar presentation - spend less on Google Ads and more on SEO and blogging

Professional looking but crappy websites make your Google Ads and Facebook Ads cost more AND send customers away!

content-marketing-by-blog-postsI’ve written about the steps and time taken to create and maintain a business blog for your digital marketing. However, I haven’t even mentioned the time and effort that goes into optimising each and every blog post for the KEYWORDS that are important to us.

This task involves:

  • Writing up “Tags”
  • Keyword density
  • Relevant landing pages
  • Keywords in headings
  • Images

The great thing about WordPress is that you can set up as many user profiles as you want and give your staff the access level they need to create and edit blogs.

They can’t really stuff it up because there’s an audit trail of changes and only someone with publishing rights can make the changes live (such as a WordPress administrator).

You could of course outsource your blog writing to someone on Upwork, Freelancer, or Airtasker, but that has it’s own set of challenges

Continue reading Nice Looking but Crappy Websites are PERFECT to Test Your Staff

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Is Business Quiet? Need More Money/Sales? Use a Database!

email marketing training course using Mailchimp & integrating with Xero

When I started my first business in Sydney’s Dee Why in the early 1990’s, I was amazed that most restaurants and cafes, as well as other retail shops like dress shops, didn’t even know who their customers were!

Many business owners knew their customers by face, but they missed out on lots of opportunities to market and make contact with these customers when business was slow or they were overstocked. Are you working your database?

Continue reading Is Business Quiet? Need More Money/Sales? Use a Database!
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I’m a Bookkeeper – How Do I Find Good Work?

attractive smiling woman

As mentioned in an earlier post, job boards offer the best-quality jobs for people in professions that translate to any industry; and this includes bookkeeping and accounting jobs.

And as another post showed, there’s a vast number of bookkeeping jobs posted to those sites every day, be it for casual, part-time or full time work. In this post I’m going to explore some ways to do well in the job market. Continue reading I’m a Bookkeeper – How Do I Find Good Work?

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Which Job Site is Best For Part-time, Casual and Contract Bookkeeping Work?

man working at desk

Why smaller job sites are not always best for smaller, one-off jobs

WHILE AUSTRALIA HAS NO shortage of jobs sites, only one of them dominates the Australian job market: Seek. It’s the largest and most profitable job board in the country — and the operator of leading sites around the world, in China, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

In Australia, Seek controls 85 percent of the online recruitment market, with 173,000 job listings and average monthly traffic of 19.2 million visitors; nearest competing job board Indeed, the aggregator owned by Japan-based Recruit Holdings, has 106,000 listings and average monthly traffic of 9.3 million visitors.

But there are many smaller websites where accounting jobs can be found.

Continue reading Which Job Site is Best For Part-time, Casual and Contract Bookkeeping Work?
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The Best Job Sites for Accounting & Bookkeeping Jobs

accounting and bookkeeping job sites job boards - Learn Xero, MYOB, Office Admin, Online business Training Courses

JOB SITES ARE IN ABUNDANCE in Australia. The market leader is Seek, which controls 85 percent of the online recruitment market. Most job site advertisers use Seek because they will get the widest and potentially best range of job applicants and job seekers.

Typically, if you’re looking for a good-quality job that doesn’t tie you to a specific industry — the way journalism ties journalists to the media industry, or construction work ties builders and plumbers and cabinet-makers to the construction industry — you’ll find it on Seek. But here are 8 more website you can use.

Continue reading The Best Job Sites for Accounting & Bookkeeping Jobs

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Working Less to Earn More? Why Freelancing is So Darn Popular

man working too hard

EMPLOYEES IN GERMANY have the world’s shortest work week, according to SME Magazine. Their work week averages just 26 hours due to strict workplace relations laws that promote a healthy work-life balance.

Sweden is also known to have implemented a 6-hour workday, or 30-hour work week, following research which has found that countries with shorter working hours generally have higher disposable incomes, greater productivity, and a stronger economy as a result. How can you do this in Australia?

Continue reading Working Less to Earn More? Why Freelancing is So Darn Popular

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The Risk-Free Way to Become a Freelancer

woman stressed about credit management and cashflow management

IF YOU’VE EVER DIPPED your foot into starting your own business, while keeping a steady income flowing from elsewhere, all at the same time, then you’re far from alone.

During the global financial crisis and in the years that immediately followed it, a funny thing happened to the job market: it birthed a freelancer economy, of which a third of Australians in the workforce are a part, and many of these freelancing individuals are also working at (an)other job/s.

Continue reading The Risk-Free Way to Become a Freelancer

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How to Use Google Search and Maps to Get More Business FREE

EzyLearn Digital Marketing Courses Google Adwords Training Courses

Plumbers, electricians, Carpenters, handymen and builders can get free leads and prospects using Google My Business, Sites and MapsGoogle My Business, Google Site & Google Maps – ALL FREE

DURING A HOME RENOVATION project for an investment property I was involved with recently, I needed to find lots of different tradespeople in the Newcastle area — and quickly.

I also wanted to look up trade tips that would help me solve a few renovation issues, and it made me realise just how important Google Maps and local searches are.

This is in addition to local classifieds and online services like Gumtree and Airtasker.

Create a free website with Google Sites

A local painter and handyman named Mark helped me with many aspects of the Newcastle renovation project and we talked a lot about the ways he could increase his profile in the Newcastle area to grow his business. 

I created him a simple website for free using Google G Suite’s Sites application, and also set up Mark’s Google My Business Account, so he would show up in local search listings and on Google Maps — all of which is free with a Google G Suite account. (A G Suite account costs as little as $5 per month, per user.)

By the way, I suggested that he shouldn’t take a photograph for his website after he’d just gotten a buzz cut, but he did it anyway! 😉

Google is a cheap and easy way to get online

Using the productivity tools contained in Google G Suite Course is a great way for businesses to get organised with great SPAM filtering email, calendars and scheduling, tasks and to do lists and much more, and using Google Sites enabled Mark to get online cheaply and easily. And because you’re using a Google product (Google Sites) to create your website, it’s a simple way to make sure you’ll be discovered in Google Maps and local Search results. 

Although WordPress offers greater functionality, and is a more robust content management system, it also requires more technical skills to ensure your website is able to be discovered in Google Search and Maps results. It’s also a little trickier to integrate with Google G Suite and other productivity apps. (We offer training courses in WordPress for this reason.)

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If you need help setting up your Google G Suite account, and would like to learn how to set up a Google Sites website to increase your online presence for your business, we cover Google G Suite in our Digital and Social Media Online Training Course. Visit our website for more information or to enrol.  

EzyLearn Online Courses Google Adwords TrainingFREE Google courses for EzyLearn students

If you’re interested in doing a Microsoft Excel, Xero or MYOB course, then you’ll be thrilled to discover that we give away some Google courses as a free student inclusion.

Our newest FREE course for EzyLearn students is Google Adwords, the paid way to get traffic to your website.