Author: Steve Slisar

Steve Slisar has been training people how to use computers since 1994, opened a training centre in 1999 in Dee Why and by 2005 had 3 training centres and created over 35 individual courses that include Screen videos with audio commentary, training workbooks for those who prefer to read to learn, and exercise files that are used with the tasks in the workbooks so you get practical experience in the software you are trying to learn. Now the creator of 5 of the most popular online MYOB training courses in Australia.
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Learn to create Presentations in powerpoint

Creating a powerpoint presentation is fun because it is creative. There are some small hurdles in using the software, but once you get past them you can create a professional presentation with animations, sounds, videos and more…

Trationally you’d need to wait for the next PowerPoint course at your local community college or TAFE or commercial training centre, but now you can start straight away from the comfort of your own home using EzyLearn’s www.powerpointcourse.com.au

Steve Slisar from EzyLearn noticed back in 2002 that his trainers where going over the same topics for most students and often students would come back again to see the same information being taught. “We used to use projectors when we had training centres” says Steve, “and it seemed strange that we were employing a trainer (and good ones are expensive) to do the same thing over and over again. That’s why we started to record videos to go with our workbooks”.

Steve also found that most people who were attending the PowerPoint course at his centres needed to know how to use the software for a test at the employment agency so that they could get a job. “The problem was” says Steve, is that most of these students then didn’t use the software for several months and had to do a course all over again.

www.PowerPointCourse.com.au is designed as the perfect solution for learning to create professional presentations quickly. You can start straight away from your own home or office, learn at your own pace, go over the training material as often as you want (within 12 months) and practice using the workbooks and exercise files.

This course is currently available online for the ridiculous price of $49, so visit the site and enrol to start learning straight away.

EzyLearn: Watch. Learn. Earn.

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Find a job with MYOB accounting software skills

With the financial crisis firmly upon us the employment landscape has changed significantly. The sad reality that we can plainly see is that large companies are reducing staff numbers at all levels including management significantly due to lack of demand for their products. This is leaving both unskilled as well as management staff without income and in a situation where they need to find employment elsewhere or start their own business. It is important at all levels to retrain and upskill to make themselves competitive.Those ex-managers left looking for work may decide it is long overdue for them to start their own business, work their own hours and potentially make lots more money. They’ll need MYOB to run their own business. Even if they employ someone to run their accounts, it is important that they understand parts of the system to be able to use the valueable accounting data available to them.

Employees who need to find another job, mainly if the new job is in an office or office admin environment, will need to know MYOB accounting software as well as other office applications like Microsoft Excel, Word and Outlook. Why do employees need to know about these software programs these days? Having skills using computer software like Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook and accounting software like MYOB are critical for employees in todays employment market because it sets them apart from their competitors, other job applicants.

Whereas many companies used to train staff up, it is expected these days to have the skills before you even start working with the company. Sometimes when job applicants apply for jobs they are asked about their Excel and MYOB skills only to find that after they receive the job that they didn’t need the software or only started to need it after 3-6 months of work. If they completed a course just to have the skills, it is often the case where they need to do another course as a refresher. This is where EzyLearn is different. 

EzyLearn is flexible training at your own pace and in your own place. MYOBcourse.com is an online training site that uses EzyLearn content to provide flexible MYOB courses to those who want to know how to set up an MYOB accounting file from scratch or those who need to use it on a day to day basis. It’s completed online and at your own pace, but best of all you receive a certificate after completing the assessment task and have 12 months access to the training material if you forget things or need to focus on new skills during the year.

Check out the website at http://www.myobcourse.com and trial the free videos to see if you can learn this way. 

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Buy MYOB Software and get 5 hours free training

Get everything in one purchase and we organise the shipping directly to you from MYOB Australia Ltd. As an MYOB reseller, we don’t hold stock, but simply organise your MYOB software to go straight from the MYOB Warehouse to you. Continue reading Buy MYOB Software and get 5 hours free training

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Touch a spiders legs with Flash

Sounds scary doesn’t it? If you are terrified of hairy spiders this is not a website for you, but if you want to see some of the fantastic things that can be created using Adobe Flash this website is definitely a good example. There are games and other fun stuff to do that is sure to help you kill an hour or so.http://www.onemotion.com/flash/spider/Be sure you click along the menu at the top of the website to see the other great things that Tomas from OneMotion.com has created. Have fun!  

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MYOB training course from $39

Why would you travel to a training centre, spend a day of your time and cram the information into your brain, when you can watch the EzyLearn MYOB training course videos over and over as many times as you want for a fraction of the price! The MYOB online training courses are available at www.myobcourse.com at more than 50% off their normal prices, PLUS, if you purchase the MYOB accounting software from us (Accounting Plus version), we’ll give you the training for free!Best of all, you can watch 20 videos for free, just to see if you like our training style. So, what are you waiting for? Register for free and watch videos for free and if you like what you see, enrol for over 50% discount. 

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Use social bookmarking and email referrals to make yourself popular

Do you have a website? Want visitors to tell their friends about it? Social Bookmarking is the new way of spreading the word about your website (ie. business). I wrote an article in July 2008 (click here to see) about how quickly word can spread, especially when website visitors can let all their friends know about your website using websites like Facebook, MySpace and other not so well known but still important websites like dig.com, reddit.com etc.  Continue reading Use social bookmarking and email referrals to make yourself popular

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How the Apple iPhone converted me to Macs

I thought it was time to write some general interest news. Having used Windows computers for the last 20 years, it was with reluctance that I accepted an iPod to have a play with. I know, computer trainer for 15 years and just received (not bought) an iPod to play with. Loved it so much that I decided to buy an iPhone as my next mobile phone/camera/calendar/music storage etc….One of the best things that Apple have done is link their iPods and iPhones to their iTunes music player. iTunes not only organises and plays music, but acts as the syncing software to ensure that you have what you want on your iPhone, this includes images, videos, music, calendar entries, emails etc. Another great features of iTunes is the massive library of songs which you can purchase individually for a couple dollars, but the most amazing thing I found was that you can also buy software for the price of songs.I downloaded a program called SpeakEasy for $2.49 and am now able to make audio recordings on my iPhone. Now, OK, I had that same functionality with the last phone I had, an iPaq, running Windows mobile software because all the functionality was built-in.  In other words, it was FREE, but the amazing thing about the iPhone software is that it’s only $2.49, no minimum transaction size and no extra charges. How else could you actually buy software that cheap? This is the beginning of the next software explosion.Why will there be a software explosion? Well, if software can be sold easily for as little as the price of a song, there will be more incentive for entrepreneurial software developers to write software programs with the home of selling much more software through sites like iTunes. This will be encouraged by the fact that devices, like the iPhone, won’t come equipped with everything on them but you’ll have to download software to use the features you want, like video for example… you can’t take videos using your iPhone as it comes in the box, but there are several softare programs out there which will allow you to. All the hardware is there, it’s just the software that’s needed.Finally with the ease of using the iPhone and it’s delicate touching interface, the logical navigation to get things done and the ease of connecting to your computer, I can see a huge rush towards consumers buying Macintosh computers. Think I’ll go along and check out my nears Apple SuperStore today 😉  

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How word spreads like wildfire on the net

These days if there is a good product on the internet the news spreads like wildfire, but why? How is it that word spreads to millions of people in such a short time? With Social media, social bookmarking (we have that on our sites using the AddThis service… so make sure you use it and tell your friends about us), blogs, Vlogs, Wikis and RSS you can tell someone and they can tell someone else and before you know it, your word of mouth recommendations get to thousands of people.

I found a great site that teaches you in plain english how these website work. Please send me an email or reply to this post with your comments. Here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/leelefever 

Enjoy,
Steve Slisar

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$30 per year is a great number for your telephone

The days of paying Telstra (or even Optus) charging exorbitant amounts per month for line rental and high call costs are over. There are new companies popping up every day in Australia who can help you save a lot of money in your phone calls. The biggest savings I have discovered recently are the costs to national phone numbers and mobiles. These calls are measured in 30 sec intervals by mobile carrier to make them look attractive, plus they have what they call a flagfall (cost to get the call connected). Not so with most VoIP providers.

The VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone company that I use is MyNetFone and I am on their smallest plan. It is such a small plan that there is no monthly fee, it’s almost like a PrePaid Service. If you already have a broadband service you can purchase a VoIP phone adapter for less than $60 and take advantage of no monthly costs, untimed national calls for 12.5c and calls to mobile at 27c per minute (not per 30 seconds). Here is a list of the different plans that are made available by MyNetFone: https://www.mynetfone.com.au/residential-voip-solutions/service-plan-choices/

A great feature of this service is that you can have voicemails emailed to your email address and open them as an audio attachment, you can get a DID (Direct In Dial) number for any and every state of the year for only $30 each. You can sound like a national company and have all your calls answer in one place (even calls from New Zealand).

Finally, you can check on every single call that you have made for the last year or more. I checked back to April last year which is when I started using the service and every single call out that I made on the service was listed with the person I called and how much the call cost!

Maybe things will change as the company gets bigger, but this is some of the great news that is coming from the telecommunications industry with the advent of VoIP.

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Want to be a ‘B’ keeper

Why did we single out the letter B? Well, because it is a combination of Business and book (as in Book keeper). The real reason is we wanted to have a catchy heading to make you read this BLOG post. But if you are serious about becoming a bookkeeper then you may want to take a look at the Wikipedia definition of a bookkeeper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookkeeper)…. Sounds pretty boring doesn’t it?? Still, a necessary evil in our modern capitalist world, and a great way to earn a living as an independent contractor. Yay!!

The real reason for this blog is to let you know that we have started a social networking site for people who are learning, know how to use or want to know how to use MYOB Accounting software (the best selling accounting software in Australia).

To join the network, get to meet other bookkeepers and improve your knowledge please feel free to join and build a ‘sphere of influence’ that will help you provide a better service to your customers and build a level of confidence to perform at your peak (great marketing words aren’t they). Apart from the humour it is important for upcoming MYOB users to get to know other users, build a community and improve their skills in an ever changing taxation environment.

The website address is myobtraining.ning.com I hope you can join us 🙂 and share your wisdom.

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Sketch your own website banner

Want to have better looking graphics on your website? Now you can do it yourself with a great website that helps you create banners for your website.

This website is just like an image editing program, but it’s on the Internet rather that installed on your own computer. This means that you can access and use it for free from anywhere. This website is indicative of the growing trend of software applications that you can use on the Internet. They call this type of application “Software As a Service” and it seems to be the way that all programs are going because the owner of the program has complete control of usage.

I hope I didn’t go off track then, but I find “Software As a Service” a very interesting business model… It’s like hotmail, gmail and most online applications, in that you are offered something for free for a while and then when you realise just how valuable it is in your daily life. It starts to become important and (most interestingly) valuable to you and it’s probably at that point when the industry will reach the stage (that they are touting will come), the stage where these “valuable” service become “paid for” services.

Anyway, back on track, the good news it that these services are currently free so get to know them, learn how to use this type of program and get some better results on your website.

The website that I’m talking about it www.bannersketch.com

Please feel free to subscribe to my blog and leave a comment 🙂 Steve

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Create your own flash intros for free online

Here is another example of everything becoming free online. I’ve just discovered a website where you can create your own flash animated intros without having any experience using Flash.

You can create either html or swf files from the site and if you decide you want to use more of the features that they have to offer, you can join the site for less than $5 per month. Have fun with it.

http://www.flashberry.com/builder.html

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Specific is terrific for your website and online marketing

Many website owners believe that they can create content and plonk it anywhere on their website and they’ll be inundated with emails and calls. They are missing the fundamental fact that people who are browsing the internet have potential 10-30 other website to visit until they find the one that they think is the best.

Here’s a couple examples of the goals I have for some of my websites.

  1. Get website visitors off your home page (otherwise they’ll bounce)
  2. Get people to take a short tour of what you can do for them (using images and maybe audio)
  3. Give people a reason to interact with your website (like a free sample or information report)
  4. Know the website goal and how to measure it (eg. the number of people visiting the website compared to the number of people who actually get to your Contact/subscription/ordering page etc).

Some fantastic news for you is that Google has all the tools to help you attract website visitors, funnel them to goal pages and measure your success. Advertising with Google costs you money, but most of the other tools are completely free (like Google website optimiser and analytics).

A great aspect about Google Adwords is that although it costs you money, you actually attract very specific potential customers to your website, customers who have typed in very specific search words and/or phrases. Better still you only pay for actual clicks to your website and not the people who just see your add.

So remember that when you promote yourself online you are looking for people who want something very specific so you need to find them and then funnel them to your own specific goals for them.

If you need some help please call me on 0413 007 481 or email steve@slisar.com.au

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Landing Pages to focus your website

A landing page is a web page that contains specific information on it that will appeal to website visitors who are looking for something specific.

For example, if I send an email newsletter which promotes Microsoft Excel Training and I insert a link to my home page (eg: www.slisar.com.au) then people who click on and follow the link from the newsletter may be a little disappointed. Why? Because they were expecting to find information about Microsoft Excel Training but now need to navigate around my website to find the information.

So, I create special “landing pages” that cover a specific topic and when a website visitor gets to the page they are pleasantly surprised because they see all the information they were searching for. This is an example of a landing page: http://slisar.com/main/page_landing_learn_microsoft_excel_online.html .

You could put special links on your landing page that “funnel” website visitors to exactly where you want them to go and thus acheiving your website goals. Notice that the URL of the above “landing page” contains keywords that are used to search for the service offered? This is one aspect of Search Engine Optimisation and makes your website attractive and “Relevant” to Search Engines.

After creating some specific landing pages I can create ads on Google Adwords, Microsofts adCentre or promote these ‘landing pages’ in email marketing campaigns so that when people click on them, they get a very specific response and are funnelled to the webpage that you want them to get to.

Creating these pages is possible using the 123ezy website builder and I have used this technique to successfully attract thousands of people to my websites and online services. If you need some help with your website design or Internet marketing, please contact me in Australia on 0413 007 481 or email me at steve@slisar.com.au

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Sell in the US – no warehousing or shipping

Have you heard about “Drop Shipping”? It is used to describe the process of YOU selling a product without having to buy it first, store it or deliver it, and some people are making thousands and thousand of dollars doing it.

The concept has been around in the US for years and although it sounds simple, you are best to know a little bit about the products you sell. Why? Because you will be the person that customer call if there is a problem…. you are the middle man 🙂 Continue reading Sell in the US – no warehousing or shipping

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Want to use bigger words in your letters and correspondence?

Have you ever wondered how people get to know about new big words? These big words are almost like a tool, used in the daily grind of work and communication with other humans and they can often lift the status of the person wielding the words. But now it is easier than you think to do it yourself.

Do you work at a computer each day? Well, you have instant access to dictionary.com, don’t you and then when someone says that you are being supine in your approach to learning new big words, you can ask them not to be so pejorative, but to leave the room precipitously.

Happy Big Word day!