Harry Blogs

With Social Networking on a rise, I see many people nowadays creating profiles on every top Social Bookmarking site. I get invites from people who never bothered about the Internet in old days. This is back in days when I had already started making money using the Internet. Having a profile on top most websites always helps and what if its from the King of Search engines Google itself. Will Google not rank its own pages high? Then creating a profile with your own name and ranking it high on Google would be a great idea. Yes, this can be done by creating your profile on Google Profiles.

So what kind of profile should you create? I would start by using the fullname, followed by contact details, work experience, hobbies, interests etc. The most important would be a link to your main website or blog. There are people who don't know about you blogging and adding your blog link to get more vistors can be really cool.

I have been creating profiles and linking back to my sites since the very beggining. I remember old days when every new site link used to go in to my Yahoo Profile. Most of such profile links are Do Follow links and can help you to pass on the link juice. A No Follow link also helps because there are many people who will simply click the link and visit your website. These visitor can become potential buyers and make money for you.

So have you created your profiles on the Internet with links to your blog or website? If not, then start creating them before someone else takes your profile name. Get started with a Google Profile now!!!

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There has been a Google Page Rank update today i.e. 24th June 2009. This blog of mine moves to PR 3 from PR 0. The best thing about this PR update is that all my sites/blogs now have a PR.

What do I expect with high Page Rank:

1. Higher PR on my site makes me look a bit different than everyone who has a low PR. It makes me look more "ELITE".
2. Higher PR definetly means some more traffic from Google. Yes, this does happen....You will always see more traffic from Google once your Google Page Rank is increased.
3. Higher Google Page Rank means more advertisers for me. People do advertise more on websites with high Page Ranks. Its not that my blog PR is high but its better than the zeros, ones and twos out there.

So am I affected by this Google Page Rank update? I am for sure...What about you? Do you still care for Google Page Ranks? Let me know how this update has treated you.

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The first person with whom I started my training program is Pratik Bagaria from India. Pratik is a good designer and also has a day job. Pratik owns a domain name www.pratikbagaria.com and is planning to make it big by blogging about designing on his blog. I shared some money making techniques with Pratik. All the techniques explained to him involved his designing skills. If you have some skills then you can do wonders with it and make lot of money online. Pratik and I, while discussing various options had a debate on his domain name pratikbagaria.com. I told Pratik to use a different domain for his designing related blog while his original domain can still be there and later can be used for a personal blog.

It was very difficult for me to convince him but at the end he did agree. Its not only Pratik, there are many people who like to buy a domain with their name on it. Lot of times this is their first domain name and hence the excitement of having their name in the domain. Before rushing in to such a domain people should consider some points as explained below.

• Your domain speaks about what your site/blog is about. In this case Pratik's blog is dedicated for designing so a domain like designingtips.com or mydesigningworld.com will help for sure. For e.g. When a person searches for something on Google, he will have a look at the results and then the domain. People will always visit relevant domains. You cannot sell mangoes on a blog called www.myapplestore.com. On the other hand, a domain with your personal name on it usually suggests that its a personal blog not focused on a single topic. Such domains should not be used for business.
• Keywords in domain help a lot. People will search for keywords related to your content and hence having those keywords in your domain/URL does help. This does not mean that the domain in this case should be mydesigningskilldonphotoshop.com. It should be short and one should try to include at least one keyword in it.
• Your domain should be easy and should not include complicated words. In this case many would spell pratik as prateek and might mispell his last name as well. This is the main reason why my blog domain changed from Harry-Inc.com to HarryBlogs.com. Your domain has to be simple enough for people to remember and easy to spell. Complicated or not so easy to spell domain names can lose lot of traffic.
• Avoid using hyphens. I have a good personal experience on this one. People usually forget the hyphen in domain names.

This means your domain has to be easy to remember with your keyword niche in it. How has your experience in choosing the right domain been? 

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I have got a few emails by people asking me questions on various topics related to making money online. I cannot answer them all because I need to know your background and other information for giving you a proper suggestion. Starting today, I will give training or help people one on one. I am sure there are many of you who want to start websites and make money online but are not able to do so due to some or the other reason. I will help you guys for FREE and ensure that you kick start your online money making journey soon.

I will select one person who can get in touch with me via email, Yahoo Messenger or GTalk. I guess around 5 - 7 days for each person will be enough to start his/her online empire. I will help everyone but it will be on a first come first serve basis. Please note that I won't be available forever to help you.

You need to do the following to get my FREE help or training:

• Post a comment here with as much detail as possible. Please note that person providing all details will be chosen first. This means if the first person does not post his background and details then I move to the second. The first person will get a chance later for sure.
• You will have to document everything you do and provide it to me. I will post it here for everyone else to read and help themselves. This post can have your link of the website we have worked on.
• You may also create a PDF which can be downloaded by blog readers here.

Depending on the response and people needing help, I will move everyone to a forum on my site where we all can brain storm and help each other make money online. This forum will be private where we can discuss and share our SECRETS of making money online. Start with your entries soon!

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We all are aware of the famous Nigerian Scams. Then there is a scam where you get cheated after getting convinced to change your Mobile Phone talk time plan. While this was not enough, I came across another scam. This scam is done through television. I was aware of such scams before but was never convinced that they are cheating people. I got cheated by these TV channels a few days ago. The channel is called E24. This channel hosts a lot of contests which are easy to win. For e.g. They will cover half face of a very famous actor or actress and then ask us to guess the actor. These guys themselves make fake calls and provide wrong answers to make people believe that this is real. Couple of days ago there was such competition going on. The challenge was to guess the actress and even a kid would guess that she is the famous actress from Bollywood Madhuri Dixit. These guys give a phone number and ask us to hold for very long. They say that the person who holds the line for maximum time will have a chance to win this contest. The contest prize money kept on increasing as people were giving wrong answers and some of them got disconnected. It was really hard to believe that people did not know it was Madhuri Dixit. This program was called Bollywood Dhamal and the prize money was Rs 95,000.

The calls people make on these shows are charged from Rs 7 to Rs 10 per minute. This means, you can easily lose upto Rs 50 or more in such calls as they never answer your call. All they ask is to keep waiting or keep trying again. After doing some research, I found out that NOONE has yet won these contests. This is just a SCAM to make money for themeselves. These TV show owners tie up with network operators. They get a share of the money we spent on dialling these numbers which cost us HUGE money. There was another show on ESPN called STUMPED which I came across recently. The stumped show always concidered me lucky after going through their menu three times. They said they will call me as I am lucky but I never got the call. Why am I always lucky after going through the menu three times? Because I am spending my time and paying for the call charges out of which these scammers get some portion. They also make money by asking us to send SMS. They also say that person who sends most SMS has chance to win. I am sure there are people who waste 100s and 1000s on such scammers. Have you ever got paid by such TV shows? Post in comments to provie me wrong.

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It has been time I have talked about SEO. I deal with SEO everyday. That does not mean that I read or practice lot of SEO stuff. I have never ever hired an SEO pro and I don't think I will ever do it. No one can ever guarantee you top positions on Search Engines. If they do, then they are fake or are using some bad methods which can harm your website in a long run.

I always have belived in a simple thing. I am not sure if I will be able to explain it out here but I will give a try (you can bad mouth me in comments for free:P). We all do small projects everyday and those projects should be done at a certain level. Lot of our projects fail due to some reasons. Lot more of our projects fail because we tend to overdo things. This is the biggest problem with SEO. Lot of websites get banned or de-indexed by search engines because we overdo lot of SEO. I am not getting in to what NOT to do for SEO in this post. Here are a few tips on what you need to do for your website to optimize it for Search Engines:

• Try and update your website atleast 3 times a week. Search Engines are hungry for new content and you can impress them with publishing new content most of the times.
• When we talk of new content, It needs to be really NEW. Just because I ask you to update your website 3 times a week does not mean that you start copy pasting content everywhere. All your content has to be unique.
• Don't link to useless or bad websites. Even if that website belongs to you, just see if the website is worth it.
• Always link to good websites. Search Engines like it if you guide them to good websites with nice and unique content. They will always appreciate your guidance.
• Don't submit to useless directories. I do submit my websites to directories but the count is not more than 5 directories. When I say directories, I mean Yahoo Directory, Dmoz and similar directories. Submitting your site to 9123921837 directories will never work.
• Check who is linking you. Don't let illegal or bad websites link you. This is not a serious offence as you don't have control over someone linking you but you can definitely try and get linked by PR5+ websites rather than getting linked by 100 PR0 and PR1 websites.
• Meta Tags still do count a lot. Make sure that your meta tags are proper. Also make sure that your alt tags along with your h1, h2, h3 tags are good. Always bold the keywords without stuffing them a lot.

Without acting more as GOD on SEO, let me share a presentation with you. This presentation comes straight from Google's Anti Spam Team Head - Matt Cutts. Do share your views on this.

You can also download this presentation here.

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MSN search is now called Bing. The all new search from MSN looks much better and is sending very good traffic to my sites. It is believed that MSN still gives lot of importance to meta tags and keywords. I have a few websites where I use the All in One Seo plugin with wordpress. I put some keywords and descriptions for individual posts which is getting me good traffic from Bing. I have always had good conversions with Bing/MSN and thus using meta keywords is helping me a lot nowadays.

How is the new Bing search engine treating you?

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Lot of people write on how they became rich and continue to make lot of money online. Many follow the same path but fail. In this post, I am writing about some of my mistakes which did not allow me to make money online. When I talk about not making money online, I mean not making as much as I could have made. Everytime my online income grows, I figure out the mistakes which I made or some vital points I missed due to which I made less or no money. This takes some research and you tend to know this after spending some time. Read these carefully as you might be doing the same mistakes.

Trying too many things - This happens too often. You stick to one task and then something distracts you. For e.g. I was making good money with my Bollywood Site but then someone says there is good money in mobile phones niche. I quickly stopped working on my Bollywood Site and started working on the Mobile Phone niche. Then someone says that the iPod niche is doing well. This often distracts you on doing one thing where you lose your focus. If you really want to make good money online then you should stick to your niche and task. You should not get carried away by people talking big or trying to convince you to try something different. If something works for the other person, it need not work for you as well. Trying out new things is good but only AFTER you complete whatever is in hand. Just like the saying One in hand is better than two in the bush.

Always believing others and not believing in myself - This happens almost everyday. I stumble upon someone at forums on some blog and tend to get impressed by the way the person is making money online. This has always stopped me from doing my own thing and follow someone else. This has failed most of the times. At the end of it you feel as if you have wasted your time and should have stuck to your own plans and milestones.

eBooks and Courses - I have wasted LOT of my time & money on eBooks, Online courses, forum memberships etc. The bottom line is that no marketing guru will share his secret with you. These guys sell their books or secrets once they know that the idea is saturated and does not make any money. These things have always disturbed my ongoing projects. I never made good money with these eBooks or courses. Instead, I think I should have concentrated on my own targets and projects.

Chat Messengers - The first thing I do when I start my computer is to login to Yahoo Messenger. I have a good amount of real and online friends on Yahoo. Most of the times, I am either helping someone on the messenger or talking about something that is not important. I have not quit using messengers but the time spent on chats has gone down.

Travelling - You would know thisif you are in Mumbai. Lot of people in Mumbai spend lot of their time travelling. I utilize my travelling time to write blog posts or do some online work. I spend around 3 hours travelling everyday. I don't drive but I utilize these 3 hours to make more money. Also, an hours sleep in the car makes you feel fresh so that you can get back to work once you are home. Driving in Mumbai traffic can give you nothing but stress and I don't need it.

Friends and Parties - If you know me personally then you would know how often do I party. I love going out, partying and hanging out with friends. This has been reduced at a great extent. Spending time with friends and Parties have been reduced now and the same time is uitilized by working on my online projects.

Now, I work with targets and always have a check on my figures. Keeping a goal, reaching it and setting another one has become a habit for me and should be for you as well. Hope this helps you in knowing why you are not able to make money online.

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Lot of people say that Making Money Online is not easy, but its not that hard as well. Things can be achieved without much efforts if you are focused and get proper directions. This post will help you make some money online with very little efforts. An hour spent on a weekend is enough if you consider yourself a very busy person. I make a couple of hundred dollars using this method per month. I work on this method when I am not concentrating on my work fully. This means, I work on this method while watching TV, listening to music or listening to an interview, broadcast, webinar etc. You don't need any expertise to make money with this method and nor do you need a website. All you need is an Amazon Associates account and the determination to make money online. The method is simple and is explained below in points:

1. Sign up for Amazon Associates program. This is an Amazon affiliate program which allows you to make money by selling products online. You get some percentage of the product sold.
2. Read this post on how to make most of Amazon Associates by increasing your commissions. You will lose some money if you do not follow this step. It is very important.
3. Once this is done, think of a product that you are going to promote. It can be anything, it can be a cell phone or a kitchen appliance. Just make sure it is available on amazon.com.
4. Login to your Amazon Associates account and click on the astore button on top. Now create an astore by following the easy steps in your account. I am not taking you through all the steps because they are easier than creating an email account.
5. One very important thing to remember is chosing the name of the astore. Chose something that has your keywords. For e.g. This astore sells Vornado Fans so its called buy-vornado-fans. Always use the words like buy, online etc. in your astores. The creation of your first astore will hardly take 2 minutes.
6. Time to promote your newly created astore. Go to Squidoo.com and create a nice page on your product with a link to your amazon astore. You may also create a hubpage, blog on wordpress or submit your store to bookmarking sites. This totally depends on how serious you are with making on your astore reach the people.
7. Create another astore with a link back to the previous store you created and vice versa. Create as many as you can with all of them linked together and with some back links from bookmarking sites.
8. So you have a network of astores which you have created without any SEO, coding or any other skills. Keep a target of 5 astores per week and keep them all linking to each other.

The money will start coming once your stores show up on search engines. It won't be a huge income but something is better than nothing. Like I said before, I make some dollars from this method and its worth for me.

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