I wrote a very nice Popup Domination Tutorial that explains the steps of installing HTML Popup Domination on any HTML web page step by step,  this is very useful when you build a landing page, or a sales page for your product, you will be able to get the popup form ready and up in a few minutes, connect it with your email list service, and start getting more opt-in right away.

I am using Aweber service to build email list, and I am doing quite fine with it, it gives me all features I need, and yes it’s a paid service, but it’s super cool when you buy something it pays itself, yes.. I’ve managed Aweber payment from my sales through email list. If you want to give it a try, Aweber cost $1 for the first month, find it here on my list of recommended affiliate products page over FamousBloggers.net, then you can unsubscribe if you feel you don’t like it, but I am sure you will love it.

Oh! and before I forgot, I must say that Popup Domination is a WordPress plugin, and now they have launched the stand a lone version I am talking about. Check out my HTML Popup Tutorial.

It’s one of my best tools!

All of you know that I am hosting a contest on our Famous Bloggers and Making Money Online blog, and our Prizes are getting higher and higher as our Sponsors are so kind and doing a great work on this contest, so I am not afraid of selling my furniture or anything from that- I hope not, even it’s still new and I won’t let anyone take it from me. I just thought about it because sometimes I got excited with this Best of the Best Famous Bloggers contest, and I am getting crazy like I want to spend more money on it, specially the cash prizes, but I really don’t want to be the blogger who sold his furniture to pay his taxes, so .. I am keeping asking my self.. Should I stop thinking this way?!

Do the New FTC Guidelines Affect me?

I have no idea yet! But guys, I came across this great post by Kristi about the New FTC Guidelines, I am not in the mode of 100% understanding this new FTC Guidelines, and I am not sure if it has any relationship with my blogging earnings and my situation as a blogger, but I think you all must check and read it, and if you understand anything tell me because I am a little confused about Laws here. All what I did is that I changed my information and updating my Taxes situation on all my earnings accounts to avoid any possible problem in the future. But I am wondering if someone earns from my blog contest, and I send him cash via PayPal, in this case I am spending and he is earning, so what If I am earning by the same way? (What is the situation of blog contest prizes?)

Who is going to surprise me by the end of the year?

I believe also that my bills are higher than my earnings, and it will be the same for some time until I can improve my blogging and advertisement earnings, I already pay taxes for my sponsored reviews, also Google AdSense has my Taxes info. So who is going to ask me for more taxes? (Just wondering!)

I really don’t want to be the blogger who sold his furniture to pay his taxes. Anyways maybe the title of this post will keep the Taxes people away from here

If you’re new to blogging and yet want to start quickly, blogging is also a great way to make money, and besides being a good communication tool, there are several business models you can try for maximum results in a short time. This article discussed the three most popular methods. So.. Let’s talk about these three methods one by one!

The first method:

Is get paid to blog. Using this method, you create your blog and add a few good articles to it. Then you sign-up with paid blogging networks like Pay Per Post or Review Me and see what “opportunities” are available. These networks are filled with advertisers looking for blogger who can help them spread the word, and they are willing to pay. Accept the opportunity, write about it on your blog, and you get paid.

The second method:

Is AdSense WordPress blogs and it requires a little more technical know-how. You need to build a WordPress blog on a specific niche topic, and start writing some good content on it. At the same time, try to get links from other blogs by leaving comment on the blogs or by doing a link exchange with the blogger. The objective is to get more traffic who will click on your AdSense ads and make you money.

The third and most sophisticated method:

Is affiliate marketing with WordPress blogs. Again, you set-up a good WordPress blog but with this model the amount of content you publish is not as important as the “selling quality” of the content. Each post you write must pre-sell the web visitor and convince him to click on your affiliate links. When the visitor makes a purchase online after that, you get credited for the sale and earn commissions.

Ultimately, which model you choose depends on how much time and resources you can dedicate to creating and managing your blogs. Your best bet is to choose a low-investment option at first. When you get the hang of it, you can venture into other blogging models as well.

If you’re serious about making money from your blog, I strongly  recommend that you signup for my video tutorials:

As a member you’ll get tons of step-by-step video tutorials on how to use WordPress, web 2.0  technology, search engine optimization, making money from Google AdSense and affiliate marketing, and so much more.

Get more information here:

WordPress Wizard 2.0 The Ultimate WordPress and Blogging Coaching Program!

I assume that some of us had participated on a few contests from all these contests running online on lots of blogs these days, one of the most reasons for contest organizers is to promote their blogs or (service and products), but after all it’s about gaining more traffic and new visitors!

Depending on contest types, Contest Organizers trying all the time to find the best voting system for their contests, there is some good WordPress plugins that do the job, and also a few websites that offers you different voting systems with different options and layouts, probably you will find what you need or you can try to customize your voting system some how to fit your contest needs.

I want to ask you for your opinion about this voting issue, by your experience or just by logic..

[poll id="2"]

Which way is better?

And if you are against one of these ways, I will appreciate if you tell us why?

All of us knows that WP-polls plugin is a very good plugin for creating polls on WordPress blogs,  but maybe people don’t know that you can add thumbnails and links to polls. So.. Today’s Trick is about how to enhance your poll and make it looks cool, specially if you are running a poll for a design contest, or a best blog contest.

Ching Ya of Social @ Blogging Tracker asked me about which plugin I am using to run Famous Bloggers Club contest as it’s limiting the votes to only one vote per person! so I am going to explain it and tell you also the trick I am using to add a thumbnail and a link to the participants blogs!

I have to say that I was inspired by Keller who runs the Best WordPress Design Contest of 2009, and oh.. By the way.. It’s a good chance to you to VOTE for new media bloggers blog if you think it has a good design that you really like!

OK! If you are looking for the best way to create a poll that prevent people from voting more than once on the poll then try out WP-polls plugin for WordPress, and following this simple trick will let you easily add thumbnails links to the poll items which will make it so easy for people to vote!

How to add Thumbnails and Links to WP-polls?

You can add any image you want simply by HTML to show the image or the link instead of using text, as some people will think that they are limited to add text only on the poll fields, but this is not true, you can add what ever HTML code you like, but don’t miss with that too much, just try to keep it simple and clean!

Check out this shot from inside of my admin panel and you will get it (click on photo to enlarge):

[nggallery id=6]

And here is a link to the Voting page of the best Blog at Famous Bloggers Club Contest, you will see it on action, and maybe it’s good to VOTE for the blog you think it’s the best while you are checking the voting page!

Now you got it right! So.. If you like this trick add a comment to tell me, if you have discovered a good voting system that really works good and looks nice then don’t leave this post with out telling us about it!

I have just visited ElegantThemes Blog and I found a new surprise, A pro looking News theme for WordPress is out, and I am thinking where I can use it, but I need your help to imagine how this Theme will look like on Famous Bloggers Club blog, I am asking for feedbacks and I want your opinion specially if you are a Famous Bloggers Club FBC Member.

Check the theme here: eNews Theme Preview and also at ElegantThemes gallery page. Find out it’s features, and Multiple Color Schemes!

I am waiting for your feedback! and by the way here is my ElegentThemes affiliate link in case you would like to purshase, it’s only $19.95 to get all the theme and support for a year!

Are you tired of daily Blogging? and you don’t find enough time for posting everyday? Don’t stress your self, you really don’t need to post everyday -this is what I think- you just need a least to blog once a week to keep your readers visiting your blog.

On this post, I am going to tell you how I managed to post at least one post every week, and what was the way I followed to generated ideas for my posts just by following my weekly tweets. I feel that I have succeeded on that some how. So let me explain to you. Special thanks to Extreme John who inspired me by his valuable comments on my blog.

Now I have a better idea: combine both Zebida Weekly Tweets with Zebida Fridays posts together!

First of all I am running Twitter Tools plugin for WP on my blog, by this way I automatically gets one post published every week, it contain all my tweets on the last week before the post is published. But the post was looking ugly and filled of unwanted links, take a look to one of my older weekly tweets posts and compare it with the last one when I decided to transform it to something more exciting and clean at the same time.

Automatic Posts generated by Twitter Tools plugin should be edited since it’s published on the blog, I add a thumbnail image, change title, add the –more- tag, category editing and add a short discretion and my Twitter account @hishaman link before the tweet links, I was editing this post when ever it’s published but I was not making it beautiful. So I decided to change all of that and end the mess, I am seeking to combine both Zebida Weekly Tweets with Zebida Fridays posts together.

Basically what I did to the Twitter Tools post is some editorial work to make it better,  and this is not all, but there will be more enhancements in the feature to make it one of those ideal useful series of posts. So follow me Twitter @hishaman and connect with me, maybe I will let your link a live or my coming posts

In one of my successful posts I have talked about how to Unzip a Compressed File on PHP Server, and how I did it by a nice script that I found. On this post I am going to tell you about another valuable script that I found, the script simply backup your website and provide you a link to download it to your computer, this could be used for different reason when you develop websites.

You can use this script in two ways, the first on is to Fully Backup your website Code, and the other use will be when you decide to move your website to another hosting and compete Godaddy file manager limited archiving file size.

Over the last few days I’ve been working on some online project, it was a dynamic website, using one of those CMS open source code that I love to work with. I was having a testing hosting server for my client’s website, now it’s ready to go online and to be published on the client’s hosting server account.

Unfortunately I couldn’t backup all files on the server, Godaddy file manager is limited to archive 20 megabits only and the website code exceed this size. It’s more than 30 megabits. Of course I could go for compressing folder by folder, but this will take the whole work day rather than doing mistakes and you start over and over again.

Finally I found the solution for this problem thanks to Web Hosting Hero and it’s Great Hosting Tutorials.

Go a head and Download Godaddy Backup Zip Archive Utility.

Although this script was originally developed to backup my GoDaddy website, it can probably be used with any Linux / Unix web host.

How To Use The Backup Script

1. Extract the PHP file from the Zip Archive Utility to your local drive.
2. Edit sitebackup.php using a non-formatting text editor such as Notepad.
3. Enter the password you wish to use to protect the script and save the file.
4. Upload sitebackup.php to the root of your website through FTP.
5. Open your web browser to http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitebackup.php
6. Enter your password in the text box and hit the Backup button.
7. Do not close your browser window. When the backup has completed you will see a link to download it.
8. Once you’ve downloaded the backup, delete fullsite.tar.gz from your website using your favorite FTP client.

If you work with server a lot, then maybe you would like to check this Tool to Extract ZIP Files on FTP Server using PHP.

One of the most basic things to make any community a successful one is the Editorial and Moderating Team of the community, it mostly depends on the friendship between them and community members, and how good this relationship is. So basically there is two ways that I can think about them right now, the Clear Way and the Facebook Way!

So, let me talk for some time about the best strategy possible for  Moderating Forums and Online Communities, of course I am not going to talk all the time, I would love also to hear your opinion about it, specially if you tell us about more things to be considered as important for community success!

Talk less to reduce your mistakes!

Some people are thinking that the best way to moderate a forum or community is to be undercover all the time, and this is what I call Facebook way, all moderators use the same account to moderate member’s posts to the community and answer their questions. No member relationship will be personally open between the editors or moderators and the members, probably it’s because of the lake of experience that force shy moderator not to show themselves!

Maybe Facebook moderators team can not do that, and follow up conversation of all members, it’s not possible because of the really big number of members on Facebook, but what I am talking about here is medium size communities with a number that can be handled by 10 to 20 moderators or editors.

There one questions that I would like to hear an answer to it from you, which strategy  is better when dealing with Moderators and Editors of a website, blog or online community?

If you are a member of any community and would like to ask for help or know a reason why your submissions or posts are panned or deleted, what would be better? If you know the person you are talking to? Or just receiving the answer or the help you need is quit enough for you?

Clear Way or Facebook Way?

OK, let me tell you my opinion from my personal experience about this matter. Being a web editor for 3 years added a great experience about user behavior and satisfaction, so I can say that the best strategy is to be clear about your identity and show your self to your forum or community members, this will solve to you so many problems, specially when 2 members have a problem together or fighting and you should act to solve this problem some how, and bring the smile back to your community and raise the loyalty or it’s members.

If you are a Moderator or a Web Editor of any website or online community, My Advice to you is to involve your self with members and try to own their friendship, learn more about them, study their cases to know how they think, answer them by what ever short messages to tell them that you are busy and will get back to full answer their questions and give them the help they need, I am sure they will appreciate that too much!

I was checking the BlogCatalog.com blog, and Discovered that BlogCatalog and BloggersUnite.org have a group on Facebook now! So, I decided to join because it’s a great idea to follow up BlogCatalog news and events on Facebook group!

The weird thing is that BlogCatalog Facebook Group currently only has about 40 members, maybe the BlogCatalog Team have to pay attention to it. I also keep wondering why BlogCatalog members are not showing on BlogCatalog blog too much, not even the Blog Directory, I think they prefer the discussions, and oh by the way discussion on BlogCatalog is so hot.

There is another thing BlogCatalog that I want to tell you about it, the Amazing BlogCatalog Shout box that shows on each member’s profile, this is an active aria on BlogCatalog, members shout out to each other to say hi or to promote their blogs, I can say it can be used as a Marketing Tool if you know how to use it, but be careful because you will really hate yourself if the community considered you a spammer and panned your account.

OK, here we go.. the links of the groups:

• BlogCatalog Group
• BloggersUnite Group