automatic backup server issue

Hi there:

I was trying to set the backup server for my data, but it didn't back up anything in the file

root@meesk2014:~# mkdir ~/backups/

mkdir: cannot create directory `/root/backups/': File exists

root@meesk2014:~# rsync -ahvz root@meesk2014:~/public ~/backups/public_orig/ receiving incremental file list

sent 12 bytes received 44 bytes 37.33 bytes/sec

total size is 0 speedup is 0.00

root@meesk2014:~# rsync -ahvz –delete --link-dest=~/backups/publicorig root@meesk2014:~/public ~/backups/public$(date -I)

receiving incremental file list

--link-dest arg does not exist: ~/backups/public_orig

public/

sent 15 bytes received 47 bytes 124.00 bytes/sec

total size is 0 speedup is 0.00

anyone help me with this

Thanks in advance