Mayank Rocks

I am very happy that my march earnings was increased by 35% of February’s earnings. I am not going to reveal my actual earnings, just for some personal reasons. A lot of people are curious to know my earnings, some among those who want to compare their earnings and some among those who just want to know out of curiousity that how much money I earn, no specific reason. The main reason I don’t want to reveal my earnings is because of those people who want to compare my earnings to theirs’. Majority of such people hate me and wants to tell the entire world that how much I earn less than them(may it be full of made up lies). Let such people be in the dark who have nothing better to do rather than trying to show how much they earn more than others. For example, one of my aunt has nothing better to do, than to degrade others by showing how much her daughter earn more than other people. If her daughter earns 30,000, she tells others that she earns 40,000. One thing I have noticed is that she is always very curious to know how much others earn. And once she gets to know, mostly if it is less than what her daughter earns, she has to make a remark there saying “Oh, only that much? My daughter makes 40k, so much more.” It is extremely stupid because the other person never actually asked you how much your daughter makes. I hate these kinds of people. I really wanted to go up and tell my aunt that even though your daughter is 10 years older than me, I make more money than her! Even after showing off an extra 10k she won’t beat me. But my parents didn’t let me tell her ever.

Earnings are not something that should be used to compare and show off. It is something that is only to benefit you in your life. If you have more money, only you are going to benefit and you are the only one who will be happy with it. Others don’t give a damn about your earnings. Telling others that you earn so much will get a few claps and smiles but then everybody else will forget it or won’t care for it any longer. And why should others care about your money? Everybody, including you only care much about something that is in your life. Do you care about how much everyone else earns? Remember that it will also create plenty of no life haters. I am still a college student and make a far amount of money, specially since I live in India. Dollars convert into good Indian money which is the main reason that I benefit far more than US earners. I will continue this story in my upcoming posts which will reveal why I didn’t go telling everybody that I actually earn online.

Yeah so? What is the big deal over here? Aren’t you aware of the “US Recession” fact? The stock market has long way down to go. Prepare yourselves for a Market whose sensex will fall as low as 11,000-13,000. Currently the sensex is at 15,644 which is still pretty good. What we had earlier, 22k sensex was actually a dream come true. India cannot sustain such a high growth and so it had to fall. A lot of market gurus were spreading false rumours that the market was going to touch 25,000 points. Oh please! Don’t listen to those so called gurus. They were even claiming that market will never fall below 16,000 mark but the truth is in front of you. The stock market has hit even below 14,000 recently. Look at the facts and decide yourself instead of listening to the gurus and blindly following them. To be honest, the market is in a big fluctuations which can rise any day and fall the very next day.

Just a few days ago, we had seen a 900+ point jump in the sensex and everybody started rejoicing but what happened today? The market fell 721 points below to close at 15.6k. Don’t give the market too much importance which it does not deserve right now. Keep away from stock market investments for a few months, specially short term investments. Long term investments will not be a problem but short terms will be. We are expecting the stock market to remain plunged till the third quarter of this year. USA is most likely to improve in 2009 and so will the US dependent India. Don’t listen to the gurus who keep on giving stupid suggestions unless you want to lose your money. The stock market is not a good risk investment option at this moment. Move to real estate market for time being which is much better investment option than the stock market. Good Luck!

Gold and Silver prices have dipped further down here on the market and for the second consecutive day. The reason for the decline in the prices is due to the sustained offerings from the stockists on the back of the weakness in the global markets.

Standard gold which is 99.5% pure has gone down by Rs.185 to Rs.12,040 and pure gold which is 99.9% pure has gone down by Rs.175 to Rs.12,105. Silver has noted a dip of Rs.405 per kg and is now worth Rs.23,415 only.

This might be a good news for the bullion market investors and buyers. According to me, you should wait a little bit more because the market is going to fall even more. Good luck!

Poverty can be defined as a situation when certain sections of people are unable to satisfy the basic needs of life. The poverty measurement differs from country to country. According to an expert group of Planning Commission, poverty line in rural areas are drawn with an intake of 2400 calories in rural areas and 2100 calories in urban areas. If the person is unable to get that minimum level of calories is considered as being below poverty line.

Even though the middle class has gained a lot from the recent positive economic development, India still suffers a lot from substantial poverty. According to the surveys, estimates show that 19.3 % of India’s population are still living under the poverty line. It was 51.3% in 1977-78 and 36% in 1993-94. The criteria used in the survey was monthly per capita consumption expenditure below Rs. 356.35 for rural areas and Rs. 538.60 for urban areas which is almost under Rs.12 a day for rural population and under Rs.20 a day for urban population. This 19.3% that we are talking about is under the poverty line but what about those who are just a little above the poverty line. That 19.3% accounts for 220 million people (2/3 population of United States).

If we look according to the world standards, atleast 70% of the Indians are living under the poverty line. Although Indian economy has grown steadily, its growth has been uneven when comparing different social groups, economic groups, geographic regions, and rural and urban areas. Wealth distribution in India is fairly uneven with the top 10% earning almost 33% of the total income. The income inequality in India is increasing. India has a higher rate of malnutrition among children under the age of three (46% in year 2007) than any other country in the world.

Causes Of Poverty

A significant fact which stands out is that those parts of India which have been longest under British rule are the poorest today. The Indian economy was purposely deindustrialised (especially in the areas of textiles and metal-working) through colonial privatizations, regulations, tariffs on manufactured or refined Indian goods, taxes and direct seizures. Not only was the Indian industry losing out but we had to rely on British goods that were purposely high priced. The agricultural raw materials exported by Indians were subject to massive price swings and declining terms of trade.

We rely too much on agriculture. There is a surplus of labour in the agriculture field. There is a lack of property rights in India also. An interesting fact is that about 60% of the population of India depends on agriculture but it’s contribution to the GDP is only about 28%. Another big factor that contributes to India’s poverty is the high population growth and lack of education. Despite this, India adds atleast 40 million people to the middle class every year which is quite an achievement. At this rate, majority of Indians will be middle class by 2025.

Outlook For Poverty Alleviation

Eradication of poverty in India can only be a long term goal. We expect to make good achievement in the next 50 years. The government needs to increase the stress on education. The education funding has to go up if we want a better India in future. Education has a major impact in eradicating poverty. We need to reserve seats in the government jobs, increase the empowerment of women and the other weaker sections of society. India needs more poverty reduction programs. The growth of the middle class shows that economic prosperity has improved but it cannot neglect the fact that the distribution of wealth is uneven.

According to me the over population growth and lack of education is the major cause of poverty. Lack of education has a direct link to population growth explosion. India today has only 61% literacy which is quite pathetic compared to 99% of United States. The most important thing that everybody should be taught is to have less children in your family. China improved it’s conditions drastically with the “one norm child planning”. India should also do something similar. If not one, then make it alteast two. The lesser the population, the better the financial conditions of each family will be, thus aiding to poverty reduction. Specially the poor people should realise this crisis. Many of those living under the poverty line marry and have 5-6 kids. Apparently they think that the more the children, the more they will earn and improve their financial conditions. Absolutely false concept. The more the kids, the more the financial stress, they need to realise that they are not improving their conditions but making it worse. They will increase the percentage of people living a life of poverty. This will further increase the government spending on poor, thus a drain on money and resources. If and only if they were educated and taught about economic problems and impact of higher population on our economy, they won’t do such a thing. That is why the education factor is most important.

India’s major goal should be improving education and reducing the population growth for our better future.

Like I had promised, here are the tips and tricks that you must apply if you want to make your signature advertising method worth it.

First Tip

Don’t just put a simple URL at your signature. People are hardly going to click just a lame looking URL. Add a good anchor text to your url to get more clicks.

Try to add a description along with your link, so people will come to know that what exactly is in that link. A description will increase the CTR. You can put a dash and show off the description in the signature. A better option is to put the description on the anchor text itself.

Don’t make your link and description too small but make it sightly bigger. A font size of 3 or 4 would be perfect. The advertisement should be perfectly visible otherwise it won’t get noticed only. Make sure that you don’t make it too big or it will be a complete turn off. People will make sure that they don’t click such big annoying advertisement.

Make your advertisement a bit colourful. You want your advertising text to be different than the default forum text. Something that stands out and looks unique gets noticed more.

Second Tip

Use a banner along with text advertisement. Make sure that the banner is a little animated one. Moving banners often get noticed and brings more clicks. Banners have always worked better than text ads. They will definitely bring more visitors to your site.

Third Tip

One of the most important tip. Try to bring out a discussion by making some interesting topics in the active forum you are doing your advertising. Now discuss about this at your own forum in detail and in a better style. Put a link to that thread on your forum in your signature in the active forum. The people reading your interesting thread and posting will notice your signature and click on the similar looking link. The people who are interested in the niche (the interesting topic niche) will definitely click your link out of curiosity or in attempt to learn more. If they like it, they might even join your forum and post. However the signature advertising can only bring visitors to your forum. The visitor to member conversion ratio improvement can be brought about by some other tricks which I will share in my upcoming posts. Stay tuned.

What is Signature Advertising?

You join a forum of your niche and post in that forum with an advertisement of your forum in your signature. Other members of that forum will see your signature and click on the link to goto your forum. This a free advertising method that hardly works.

Is this kind of advertising worth it?

Signature advertising is not worth it in my opinion. It is very time consuming and conversion ratio is very less. You have to look for active forums in your niche, join them, actively post in the forums and wait for members to click your signature link to goto your forum. The visitors you get this way is itself very less, forget the visitor to member conversion. Think this way, why would a member of an active forum will visit and join another new forum in the same niche? I’d assume that most of the forum owners trying this kind of advertising has recently started their forum or owns a dead forum. Unless its a non active forum, no body wants to try such kinds of advertising methods.

Note To All Those Forum Owners

A lot of people claim that signature advertising is one of the most effective method of advertising for your forum because you target niche people. It is a false claim and to be honest, this method is a waste of time. Try this only if you have all the time in the world. I would utilize this time in getting content to my own forum rather than giving content to other forums. Most of the people who claim this don’t own an active forum themselves. However this is not a complete waste method. It can be useful if you know the right way. Read below : -

So Is This A Total Waste Method?

Not really. It is a not completely waste method. You will have to apply some special tricks if you want it to work. If you cannot apply those special tricks, then this method is not for you. For those special tricks, you will have to wait for another day. Visit my blog tomorrow to read the next half of this article. I am going to tell you how to make this advertising effective with a few tricks. Stay tuned.

The government politics are extremely sick. In their five year ruling, the government has to think about wellbeing of the poor people or middle families only at the time when elections are near. The whole system is adjusted only to benefit themselves rather the people of India. In all the four years, they have not worked as much as they are doing now. Just when the elections are near, our railway minister made the fares cheaper which will benefit mainly the poor people. Why? Because the people of India needs to know that the government is thinking about them. Now the payments hike for government officials. Lowest salary has been increased, again to benefit those who don’t earn or haven’t got much money. Why? The government wants to improve India’s poverty. The government thinks a lot about the people of India.

Where was this very government in the last 4 years? Why no such benefits at the time they came to power? Why only when the elections are near? And most of these are just a show off which does not involve much work. Reducing the railway fares to 5% is not enough. It is only a discount of Rs.5 in a 100 rupees fare. But the trains still run slow and crappy. The railways are profiting a lot but there is no improvement in the speed of trains, not much improvement in the infrastructure of railways. It is not the price that needs to go down but the infrastructure of railways that needs an improvement. People won’t realise this and will think that “Oh he has done so much for us, he reduced the fares, wow”.

India has increased the education funding, but this year when elections are near. Why? Because government thinks that education is very important for any country’s improvement. But does this realisation comes only when elections are near and not when any government comes to power? India’s literacy rate is 61% whereas America has 99% literacy rate. India is still has a lot of people who are living below the poverty line. Why hasn’t the government doing anything for them? Do they only work at the last years to attempt to get votes in the next election and fill their pockets rest of the years?

Just have a look in the up coming months. Just notice how much work will they do this year. All these are just to get the votes in the next election and nothing else. If they won again, they all will relax for 4 more years and then start working again to get votes in the next election.

Today was the first time ever I received a fraudulent paypal email. The scammer masked his fake email to show it as “accounts@paypal.com” but actually his email was “akstcabinmobiliariamnsdgs@abinmobiliaria.com”. Apparently, the person thought that I was stupid enough to fall into his trick. He should go and try his tricks with some new internet users or some stupid people.

So, I decided to tell all of you and include the tips on how to find out if the email you got is fake or not and also a few safety measures.

Fake Alert 1 : - Don’t forget that whenever paypal will email you, it will address you as “Dear ‘Name’ “. any phishing emails will say something like ‘paypal customer’, ‘paypal member’, ‘paypal user’. It’s the very moment you should be sure that this email is fake.

Fake Alert 2 : - They will send some links in your email where you have to click to check out. Make sure that you see the url in your browser before you login or do anything on that site. URL must contain “http://www.paypal.com”, usually scammers use urls like “paypal-theirwebsite.com” or other such stupid urls. And mostly they ask you to login, after you login you get re-directed to paypal.com just normally. But actually your ID and pass has already been sent to the criminals. Don’t panic because you are still not in danger till the person sees your account details. Make sure that you change your password immediately and you will be safe.

Fake Alert 3 : - As paypal says that they will never send any attachments ever in any of their official emails. So if any fake email sends attachments, delete those immediately. They may contain virus or other harmful materials which should not be opened. It is not a big problem if you have anti virus but it is still not worth taking the risk.

Safety Tip 1 : - Always remember that whenever you want to log into paypal account, open a new page in the browser and type in “www.paypal.com” and only then login. For more safety, avoid logging into paypal accounts from public computers or internet cafes. I have noticed some cafes using key loggers that keeps record of every letter typed into the computer. If it is urgent then make sure that there are no such programs switched on at the computer and only then login.

Safety Tip 2 : - If any email from paypal asks you for your personal informations, don’t reply back immediately with the details. It may not be paypal.com’s official email but some phishing attempt to get your private details. If paypal requires information from you, they will notify you in an email and request that you enter the information only after you have safely and securely logged in to your PayPal account.

Hope my tips and alerts will be helpful for you all

I am glad to announce that my teen forums has successfully passed the 500000 post mark. Congrats Teen Hut!

I remember that day when I had started my forums - 25th November, 2005. It is 2 years and 4 months old. Pretty slow but at the end of March 2007, we had only 45,000 posts. By the end of march we will reach almost 530,000+ posts. So that makes it almost 500,000 posts in just one year which is quite an achievement for us.

Congratulate the forums

Have you ever wondered how important is “Word Of Mouth Traffic”? If you haven’t yet, then it is time to do so. Word of mouth traffic is extremely important for any forum to grow faster.

What Is Word Of Mouth Traffic?

The members who post and be active on your forums tell their online or offline friends about your forum and ask them to join the community. Since their good friends are saying this, specially real life friends, they do check out the forum and join it also. Such kind of traffic is known as word of mouth traffic.

Is such kind of traffic good?

Word of mouth traffic is better than search engine traffic due to its conversion ratio. Majority of the referrals turn into members and even become active members. My forum has a lot of active members referred by their friends who still post.

But do members refer others usually?

Not really. For some reasons members don’t like to refer others to your forum because they are either lazy or forget about telling anyone else about your forum. Some don’t think that the forum is good enough to tell others but still be active on your forum.

How should I make them refer others?

Very simple. Push them. Don’t literally go and push them. I mean offer them incentives. Start a contest like “The person who will refer the most people in a limited time will win $$$”. Or make some premium memberships available on your forum and give them for free to contest winners. I am going to try the premium memberships trick soon. I will let you all know if that works.

Why does a forum grow faster with word of mouth traffic? 

Easy. Word of mouth traffic has the best ever conversion ratio. Many word of mouth visitors turn into active forum members who be active and continue to post for a longer time. Much better than search engine referrals. Search engines give a very low visitor to active member conversion ratio. Those who own an active forum will understand me. If your site gets 5000 unique visitors from google everyday, 50 turn into members only and 1 or 2 or nobody out of those 50 become an active member. So 1:5000 or 1:2500 is the actual ratio. But from word of mouth traffic, the ratio would be 1:1, 1:2, 1:3. So you see the difference? Try out this trick and see your forum grow fast.