Category: Small Business

small business marketing, website design, referral marketing, online marketing, direct marketing, telemarketing, direct mail marketing

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We’ve just added 23 training videos to our online WordPress Training course

NEWS FLASH: If you are an existing WordPressCourse.com.au student you’ll be thrilled to hear that we have created and made available 23 new videos about becoming an expert in WordPress. These new videos are available to you at no extra charge and they are part of our growing range of WordPress, Google and Social Media topics that are coming shortly.

The topics we have covered in this videos includes:

  • Blogs, Posts and RSS Feeds
  • File Management and File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
  • Website Statistics and Google Analytics
  • Backing up your website
  • Features of Elegant Themes Premium Themes
  • Social media and commenting
Nareev Bhatt was one of Australia’s top bloggers back in 2009 and he and other top bloggers like Karen Cheng use a simple website with Google Feedburner to deliver their news to anyone who wants to read it. This course will show you how to have your own newsletter using your WordPress Blog and FeedBurner.

This video from Channel 10 in 2009 explains how three popular bloggers make a lot of money by working from home.

 

 

Read more about our WordPress Training Course and join in to take advantage of our current prices and LIFETIME student access

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Work at home managing customer’s WordPress websites? Introducing the WordPress Online Training Course!

WordPress is used as a Content Management System (CMS) for millions of small business websites around the world. WordPress is like the Microsoft Word for Websites and we have a course that will teach you how to use it as a blogger, article and news writer all the way up to a WordPress administrator. In fact at the end of this course you will learn enough to get your own website up and running as well as help others create and maintain their own website.

The best part of this course is that it entitles you to the EzyLearn LIFETIME membership feature, so when we update it with new content about marketing your website you can access the new information for no extra cost. For more information and to enrol, visit our WordPress course website.

What’s included in our WordPress Online Course (you can click these links if you are an existing student):

WordPress Pages and Posts

Administration Privileges and Settings

With Administrator priveleges you are now able to affect global aspects of your websites appearance. You can also arrange the website layout and user access permission.

Design options and Themes

Background colours, and header images are just the beginning. Learn to install free and premium themes and then customise them using widgets, plugins, custom menus and RSS newsfeeds

Website Hosting Control Panel – email

Your website hosting control panel provides you with stats about your website usage, but most importantly your email and other applications. Learn how to manage your email accounts and email access.

Blogs, Posts and RSS Feeds

We have all the training videos and they will be uploaded shortly (no extra cost for you to access). Syndication gives you the power to be many places at once. When you write a blog that article can be made to appear in your readers inbox, on other websites and of course at your blog.

Google have a range of tools to help you gain exposure on the world wide web and one of these tools is called Feedburner. This tool will enable you to have your own email list subscribers attached to your blog.

Can I make my own site?

Yes. We’ve thought of that too. When you enrol for the Online WordPress course, choose the option that provides you with a student website hosting account.

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MYOB Training Course: Dedicated video tutorial server

Are you happy with your current skills?

Do you like to learn new things?

We’re the same. We love to come into contact with new software and internet technology and anything that will help us to remain a market leader in online MYOB training. We also like to receive feedback (positive and negative) from our students so we know what we are doing well and what we can improve on.

Recent feedback has been about the navigation around our online training video tutorials. These videos are full audio visual demonstrations using the software, just like you would expect in a training classroom using a data projector.

With online training video tutorials you can go over our material again and again until you understand it. You can also go over it in the future when you come across a problem you need some help with. Combine it with our step-by-step training exercises and knowledge reviews and you have a complete learning solution.

So, what’s the news?

[box] We’re putting all new content and upgraded training course materials onto a new dedicated video hosting server![/box]

What does this mean?

It means that the videos are hosted on a separate service to the learning course so that both will operate much faster. All new training videos will also have a navigation panel and the ability to scroll through the video to the place you want to be and finally you’ll be able to expand the video so that it takes up your entire screen.

What the video below to see what we mean.

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Selling horse feed in the internet age

We’re in the internet age whether we like it or not. Our internet connection is as valuable to us now as our power supply and our telecommunications and it’s important to have a website if you are in business. In this post I want to introduce you to a small operation in King Island in Tasmania. A company that sells Kelp is learning how to play the internet game and best of all you can learn with them.

Kelli has a WordPress website hosted with 123ezy and we are building our WordPress and Webmaster Course around her growing internet presence. To start with we have created some elementary training videos about the navigation around the WordPress themes and what different parts of the website are called. We’re learning about themes, header images, menus and widget just to get started. As we progress we’ll be talking about Pages vs Posts, tags and categories, working with images, Search Engine Optimisation and much more.

We’ve included our Introduction to WordPress video below so if you are reading this on your phone, click on the heading to get to our Blog page where you can watch the full video.

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MYOB Online Course Videos — Creating Customer Cards

Click on the heading to view the image or video if you are receiving this via email.

Creating customer cards in MYOB is easy! To enter a new customer, simply click on ‘New’; this will bring up a new window.

It’s also simple to edit customers here. Say you want to change postal or contact details, simply click on ‘Customer’ and hit ‘Edit’.

You will note that MYOB gives you a choice in the designation section to enter a company or an individual. All customer entries are stored alphabetically so make sure if you are entering an individual you use their last name first.

You use the tab key as a shortcut to go through all the fields.

A handy hint: When a customer has a longer address, such as a unit number or a Suite number, hold the Control Key and press ‘Enter’ for a second line.

Also, if you have tabbed past a field you need, simply hold the Shift Key and hit the ‘Tab’ key to go up to the field above.

Video Reference: 501204

Link for existing students: http://myobcourse.com/elearning/mod/resource/view.php?id=359

For information about our Online MYOB Training Course and new Lifetime Membership for all students, please visit: www.studymyob.com.au

Please feel free to send your comments about this video to: sales@ezylearn.com.au

 

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Online MYOB training is better than just CD’s or workbooks

In the evolution of our online training courses we originally started with a flash based player that operated in our training centres. It was easy to use and accessible on all computers. We then took a look at how to deliver the same consistency of experience using our training videos in your home, an environment that could be completely difference and that we have no control over. At first we thought about CD’s and after trying some different technologies, we came to the realisation that the experience different from user to use and computer to user. Will online learning really be the best way?

One issue that we came across in delivering our courses online was whether customers have a good enough broadband connection to receive the relatively large videos files through to them. The other question we had was how long should students have access to the training materials. In the end, we decided to go as OPEN as we possibly could. We opted to use technology that would enable all students to access the materials, whether they were on a Windows based computer or Mac.

The result is that you can now use our training material for life (no need to try to locate those scratchy CD’s) and you can use a combination of videos (with live demonstrations and audio commentary), Workbooks (with actual exercises you can try) and Knowledge Reviews (to test your skills) and it works on all platforms.

See our online MYOB training course outline.

[button link=”http://www.myobcourse.com.au/training/page_enrol.html”] Enrol into our online MYOB course[/button]

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What does a webmaster look like? Could you be one?

Learn how to use Wordpress and social media training course

Learn how to use WordPress and social media training courseIf you mentioned the word Webmaster 5 years ago you would imagine someone slightly geeky, who drinks cola, has thick rimmed glasses and talks incessantly about the latest technology and gadgets. Things have changed. The technology used to create websites was the domain of nerds who enjoyed writing code and getting dirty with technology using programs like FrontPage, DreamWeaver, Flash etc, but now it’s the domain of staff members, marketing people and remote contractors (Virtual Assistants who work from home). Why has it changed?

The most significant aspects of website design are:

  • The template (or theme) that’s used including colour scheme, branding and navigation
  • The  images and copy (text) used to fill the site
  • Promoting and marketing the website

Modern day Content Management Systems like WordPress, Joomla and even older ones like Drupal make everything much easier and here’s why:

  • Thousands of designers create templates that you can purchase for $20 to $300
  • Once a template or theme is designed and setup the content management is the same (just like using Microsoft Word)
  • Writing articles, creating extra pages and adding to your navigation becomes as easy as selecting a check box and picking a category.

So is it really something that you could do?

wordpress themes included in Webmaster course
wordpress themes included in Webmaster course

Have you heard about WordPress, Google, Facebook and Twitter? Can you use your computer to access your email, do internet banking and accessing other online services? Have you heard about or used PayPal? If you have, then you are at least familiar with some of the tools used by a modern webmaster. Combining these new online marketing tools and WordPress CMS driven websites you can get busy and start creating.

The Internet, smart phones, cloud computing and VoIP are making the world a smaller place and allows people to work from home but still remain digitally connected. There has been a significant shift towards remote contracting (virtual assistants) and the concept of mums working from home is now commonplace.

If you want to come on the Webmaster journey with EzyLearn we have the WordPress course. It’s a step-by-step system of setting up, creating content and images, building the contents and then promoting your own business using all the tools we’ve mentioned in this blog post. Best of all you’ll have an internet guru educating and coaching you each step of the way until your website is complete so not only will you have your own website and tools to promote it, but you’ll have the skills to promote yourself to other businesses and help them with their website management.

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Learn Powerful PowerPoint in 4 hours

If you are receiving this post via email click the heading to visit our blog and watch the free PowerPoint training video included.

EzyLearn online Microsoft PowerPoint course
Peter Costello using Powerpoint (from smh.com.au)

Microsoft PowerPoint is a fun program to learn that gives your presentations structure and professionalism. We recently spent 4 hours getting a technical product manager up to speed with PowerPoint so that he can use Powerpoint slides to demonstrate his companies products to their dealer network. Geoff had used the program only sparingly over the years but the time had come for him to quickly get up to speed so he could look professional with his dealer network.

In the 4 hour training session he had all the skills to create his own presentations from scratch, use company templates, create flowcharts and diagrams, charts and animations and even incorporate music and video into his presentations. He also had access to our online course and some course notes to keep as a reference.

See our PowerPoint course outline and enrol into our online course, or make contact to organise a half day training session at your office or our training centres.

If you want to subscribe to receive new blog posts in your email subscribe using the feedburner form on the blog page.

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Recommend us for a reward

These days you can promote the fact you like something very quickly and easily. Twitter and Facebook accounts are free and almost everyone knows how to use them. Established blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger are also easy and free to setup but there are even simpler microblogging platforms like Posterous.

What’s so good about all this new technology that is available? It means you can sign up for affiliate accounts and start earning money from referring good quality website to people you know or are connected to. Here’s a link to a post we wrote earlier this year which explains a bit about how affiliate marketing works.

We are trialling a new affiliate service for our online MYOB course and the reward is $25 for a successful sale from your recommendation. Don’t worry the affiliate management system keeps track of your referrals. Here’s a link to the affiliate website.

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Google saves you 2-5 seconds with Instant Search

The innovator in searching through millions of web pages to find the most relevant yesterday introduced Google Instant, a way of providing you with results before you’ve even finished typing. In other words Google has a pretty good idea what most people want to find when they start typing and reveals the results as you type. Great for slow typers this new feature will give you relevant results right there on your screen.

We are pretty proud of our search engine placement for online MYOB course so please feel free to do a search using the new Google Instant and see our website appear on the first page of search results.

I tried using the search and it was fascinating watching the search results change so quickly. When I tried it a second time it just worked like the normal Search results. Go and visit the Google Instant Search page or read Google’s announcement on their blog to learn more.

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What do you think? hmmm?

Social media is the craze these days. Web 2.0, interactive, personal and relevant are terms used to describe what you are looking for in your internet experience. We are interested in knowing what you think about our content and at the same time we want you to share your thoughts with others so we’re trialling a social commenting feature at the end of each post and we’d love to hear from you.

EzyLearn is trying a new service where you can comment on, recommend and share our training material with your network of friends or colleagues. You can see at the bottom of this post, under the Subscribe box, that you can log in using any choice of social networking services and make a comment about this or any other blog post.

Please let us know what you think about our blog posts, videos and training material.

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VoIP Phone System from Virion

broadband speed test for voip phone system
is your internet fast enough for a voip phone system

We’ve updated our telephone system to the latest in Cisco IP phones and want to share the information with you because we think it’s ground breaking. We use our Broadband Internet connection to make and receive all our calls and that throws out the window the old concept of paying Telstra almost $40 per month just to have a telephone number. I was only just explaining to a friend today how the VoIP phone system from virion works and I’ll try to explain it again in this blog post.

Your Broadband Internet connection delivers the voice to your phones and takes it away to the people you call so this link is critical in the quality of your voip phone system. The best way of testing the quality of your broadband internet connection to run a speed test and see how fast your upload speeds are. Yes, I did say upload speeds. Most people want fast download speeds to download videos, emails and attachments, but with a voip phone system you need to have a broadband connection with good upload speeds.

In this diagram the upload speed is 0.81Mb/s (810Kbps) and the best quality VoIP phone system requires 87.2Kbps, so,theoretically 10 people in your office could be having phone conversations with your VoIP phone system using your broadband internet. But what if someone is sending an email with a huge attachment? I’ll keep you up-to-date with our VoIP experience as we use it.

If you want to test a business grade VoIP phone system and VoIP service take advantage of virion’s Instant Trial.

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The right heading can bring people to you

The right heading on a flyer or a document will let you know immediately if that information on that page is “relevant” to you. It’s no different with a website. When you do a search in Google you decide in second which of the search results to go to depending on what they write in their title and description. Click the link in this blog post title to watch our video on Search Engine Optimisation.

EzyLearn offers the 123ezy website builder as part of a website hosting package and it makes it so simple to add (and change) words to the heading and description of each page within your website. Visit the 123ezy website for more information or take a look at a website that he been created using the SiteBuilder to see how it works.

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Using Google Adwords – Step 1 – choose a budget

The Google Adwords market is constantly changing depending on who is bidding for the keywords you want, how they are bidding and how much they have to spend. Keeping this in mind you will have to make some simple decisions before you can get started.

I sat down with a business owner today and she wanted to bid for every keyword she could think of, everything relating to her field of business, but the problem with that is that you are then competing with everyone else for a whole lot of words. We ended up choosing fewer words and decided to spend more to get people to our website using those keywords. If website visitors who come to your website from a Google Adwords advertisement and stay and explore your site Google will recognise your site as a good result for its searches and this will end up elevating your position in the “relevancy based” search results. That should be a significant goal, but I am now just digressing.

So, the business owner agreed that she was going to spend $1200 per month. The next step is to figure out which services she is going to promote and she gave me a list of 15 different services,which we then categorised into 4 main categories… Phew. We then looked at the relative weighting for each category of her business to decide how much they will receive of the $1200 per month and it came to a relatively simple 25% split each or $300 each category (division) per month. These were good figures because that comes down to $10 per day and that is how you can limit the amount of money you spend on Google Adwords…. by setting a daily limit.

The next step is a little more time consuming and involves choosing the right keywords and keyphrases to use for each category of the business. Once you’ve discovered this you choose how much you are willing to pay per click… hence the term Pay-Per-Click (or PPC) advertising (adwords.google.com). You may not get this part right the first time, but you will soon realise that you can pay for anything from 9c to over $20 per click to be on the first page. The more generic and popular the keyword the higher the price, the more words you combine together (keyphrase) the fewer people will be promoting it so the price will be lower. I’ll cover this in another blog post.

UPDATE:

Learn about alternatives like using relevant keywords in a blog for your business to make your website more valuable and ensure it becomes a trusted resource for customers.

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MYOB training courses scheduled for Chatswood and Burwood

workbooks and videos for MYOB training coursesAnnouncing: EzyLearn and Maxis Solutions (RTO 91428) have just released the training schedule for courses in MYOB Accounting for Day to day transactions in both Chatswood and Burwood. These courses are scheduled conveniently during school hours of 9.30am to 3.30 so that mums can attend and get full value out of their day.

These courses cover the Sales, Purchases, Inventory and an introduction to the Banking modules of MYOB Accounting. If you don’t have the software there is a link to the freely downloadable Test Drive software that you can use to practise what you learn on your home or office computer.

The Topics in more detail are:

Creating quotes, orders and then invoices in the sales system, changing item information and credit terms “on the fly” while you are creating an invoice. Understand the different invoice formats, including time billing, how to create and delete text headings and more.

Finding historical transactions is a major part of accounting software. In this course you’ll learn about the Sales Register, Sales Journal, To Do list, Accounts Receivable and Payable reports and Custom lists, plus an introduction to Statements so that you can supply your clients with a summary of funds owing to you. You also learn about the two main type of statement so you can choose the one that suits your needs.

This course also includes recording cash sales, entering credits, settling credits, how to deal with bad debts, deleting sales payments, and reversing credits.

Payments: You’ll learn how to enter invoice and purchase payments including part payments and over payments.

Purchases: You’ll learn how to keep track of your purchases whether you pay for them straight away or receive an account. You will also learn how to create a purchase order, converting it to a bill, creating an item credit, settling and reversing credits, and analysing purchases.

Banking: If you make purchase or income transactions that have nothing to do with the sales or purchases modules, then you’ll learn how to make these entries using the banking module.

There is an early bird rate so visit the ordering site and book early to save money.

We closed our last training centre in 2006 and have taught thousands of students how to use MYOB accounting software since then because we offer

  1. All courses for one price,
  2. Training on various versions of the software,
  3. Training videos combined with knowledge review questions,
  4. MYOB Course Workbooks that act as an MYOB bookkeeping induction
  5. We’re accredited by the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers
  6. We offer a money back guarantee.

Discover more reasons to choose EzyLearn for your MYOB Training Courses.

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Email Marketing made simple

Content Marketing for good local real estate agents

EzyLearn has just implemented an incredibly simple email marketing solution for it’s clients. This solution allows you to only pay for the emails that you send, while providing a professional subscription service and html templates for your mailouts.

This solution is part of the 123ezy suite of website services and it makes the whole internet marketing, social media and keeping in touch with clients much easier. Best of all you can measure the success of your campaigns.

The cost is only $49 to setup and then 2 cents per email you send. If you prepay for your emails it comes down to even less.

Interested businesses should contact support@123ezy.com, call Steve Slisar on 0413 007 481 or order your newsletter online.