What is the Secret Special Sauce?
Ed Dales Secret SauceAnyone who has been following Ed Dale and his Thirty Day Challenge will instantly recognise the phrase “Secret Sauce” or “Special Sauce”. It has been mentioned by Ed on a number of occassions and a great deal of atticipation surrounds it. It is supposedly a way to increase your position in Google for a particular phrase.

If you’ve followed all of Ed’s advice and got your blog indexed in Google in record time and you’ve used social bookmarking responsibly you should be getting Google traffic by now right? Well, maybe….

The Problem with the 30 Day Challenge…
The problem is that most of the traffic from Google searches goes to the first four sites returned from the Google search results…

Therefore, if your site isn’t listed in the top four then you’re going to see limited or no traffic. Obviously this is a big problem for anyone trying to make their first $10 and win the challenge.

Enter the Secret Sauce…
The Secret Sauce has been mentioned as a way to address this problem. Ed has built up the suspense as to exactly what the Secret Sauce is. On Friday it finally looked as though the Secret of the Secret Sauce would be revealed on “Monster Monday”.

Well Monster Monday is here and guess what?

There will be no Secret Sauce…
Ed has decided pull the Secret of the Sauce because of a small minority of spammers who have been following and abusing the challenge. This may be a good reason but ultimately it’s going to dissapoint a lot of legitimate followers of the challenge (myself included).

Ed Dale’s Secret Sauce - The Secret is there’s no secret, but shhhh it’s a secret

What may also start alarm bells ringing for some people is that anyone who subscribes to The Immediate Edge, which costs around $150 a month, will get access to the Secret Sauce. To some it may appear as though The Thirty Day Challenge was just about recruiting for The Immediate Edge.

Personally, I have to believe that the motives behind the Thirty Day Challenge have been good. Ed and his team have provided a lot of quality training which has been both informative and useful. Indeed I only started this blog because of Ed and the Thirty Day Challenge.

No doubt there will be an increase in the level of interest in Ed’s paid services as well as subscribers to the Immediate Edge. I don’t think that this is the primary reason for providing the 30 Day Challenge, although i’m sure nobody will be complaining about the increase.

The Challenge Continues…
The good news is that the 30 Day Challenge will continue past the 30 days. This is good news right? Well it will enable more people to do the challenge. For those of us who have almost completed the first 30 days, we’d much rather have the secret of the sauce!

Ning is an online platform where you can create, customize and share you own Social Websites and Social Networks for free.

Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreeseen (from Netscape) and Gina Bianchini. It launched in October 2005.

All the websites running on it’s service are build with standard PHP. The platform itself is built with Java.

Explore Ning’s Social Networks

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What do you get if you cross a search engine with social bookmarking?

The answer is Sproose.

You use Sproose just like you would any other search engine. You type in what you are looking for and are presented with a page of results.

The major difference is that you get to vote for your favorite sites. The more votes a site gets the higher it goes in the index. You can also choose to comment on a site.

Here are some of the cool things about Sproose…

• Unique results
• User Voting & Commenting
• Spam Deletion
• Fast Results

Users can choose to share their vote history with other users who may have similar interests. This is a powerful feature and allows exploration and networking of related web pages.

Users also help to control spam. If too many users select the page for removal the site will be eliminated from the index. Sproose has worked hard on security to ensure that each user only gets one vote. Robots, scripts and suspicious activity will be blocked or removed.

Tags are automatically generated by Sproose for all popular pages. Popular tags are accessible on the navigation bar and are displayed in a tag cloud. There is also a video search which is powered by blinkx.

Although the index is clearly no where as big as Google’s, the results are surprisingly good. It may not be a Google killer just yet but watch this space!

“Tumblelogs are the refreshingly simple new way to share anything you find, love, hate, or create.”

At least that’s what the Tumblr website would have us believe.

So, why then has Tumblr chosen to delete tens of thousands of it’s customers blogs over the past 3 days? The answer, we’re told is to intercept ‘spammers’ taking advantage of their free service.

Most sites would welcome the creation of over 20,000 new user accounts practically overnight, but not Tumblr. It seems Tumblr isn’t interested in a massive influx of new users or huge interest in their services.

The problems began when members of The Thirty Day Challenge began to create accounts as part of the challenge. The Thirty Day Challenge is a free service run each year by Ed Dale and members of The Immediate Edge. The aim of the challenge this year was to make $10 online by using many of the free resources available on the web.

Ed Dale has been very clear on his stance on spamming throughout the challenge. There has been an emphasis on providing good quality content. Ed often tells participants to ask themselves if the user going to be happy or annoyed with the content provided?

Tumblr’s reaction has been a mass cull of new and old users alike. They pulled the trigger and deleted around 20,000 accounts. There has also been blocking of new and existing accounts where they perceive their services are being used for financial gain.

It appears that in Tumblr’s trigger-happy rampage, they may have shot themselves in the foot. Many users are annoyed with Tumblr for the way in which they deleted content without so much as an e-mail. Many people have lost hours of hard work and feel very bitter towards Tumblr. If Tumblr’s aim is to compete with existing blogging sites like Blogger.com they have certainly thrown away a huge opportunity.

Participants of the Thirty Day Challenge are learning more than just how to sell on the Internet. They are learning the ethics of Internet Marketing. Ed Dale supports doing this in a positive way and providing the user with good quality content.

The Thirty Day Challenge gave a huge thumbs up to Tumblr. It’s a shame then, that Tumblr chose to act in this way. Choosing to nuke everyone instead of carrying out a surgical strike may be a blunder that Tumblr will regret for a long time.

• Sharing some social bookmarking love with SocialPoster.com #
• Currently Browsing: http://www.netvibes.com/ Netvibes is a multi-lingual Ajax-based personalized start page. Thanks AlekNovi on TDC for this #
• Currently Browsing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444682/ "The Reaping" is a great movie. Go see it or rent the DVD this October! #
• Currently Browsing: http://tinyurl.com/34aljt A great list of 300+ WordPress tools for your blog. #
• Currently Browsing: http://www.dslreports.com/tools Great site for checking your DSL connection… #

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• Trying to catchup with work…. #
• Showing my wife how to use Twitter!!! #
• Currently Browsing: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ This is a great website for getting stumbles. Just look in the freebies section!!! #

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I saw “Social Bookmarking in Plain English” on YouTube by user leelefever. I was immediately impressed by the way he uses paper cutouts to clearly explain everything…

Also be sure to checkout the CommonCraft Show Website for more “Plain English” guides.

I’m going to take this opportunity to introduce you to a great forum.

Digital Point Forum has sections on Search Engines, Internet Marketing, Business, Web Design & Development, Products and Tools and more!

In the Buy, Sell or Trade section (listed under Business), there is an interesting Sub-Forum called ‘Freebies‘.

Basically anything that is free (either a product or service) is listed here. It ranges from free products like free ebooks and scripts right through to free services like logo design.

What i’m interested in at the moment, mainly because of the Thirty Day Challenge is social bookmark exchanges. It just so happens that there are a lot of people advertising to exchange social bookmarks like StumbleUpon and Digg in the freebies section.

Some people ask for you to Stumble or Digg their sites in return. Others ask for you to leave “Green” or “Rep” which is just positive feedback.

Normally you will have to Stumble/Digg a users site and then provide your StumbleUpon/Digg username in order to get your own site Stumbled/Dugg.

I tend not to post my Digg URL in the forum as I’ve heard that Digg has been banning accounts asking for Diggs in certain forums. I would normally send a Private Message to the poster with my Digg URL in order.

Anyway, hope this is of help to you. If you’re a part of the Thirty Day Challenge remember to use all the great resources there too, especially your fellow team members!

• Going to bed at 5am after playing SL & working on my Tumblr blog… #
• Currently Browsing: http://stressreliefgames.tumblr.com/ My first Tumblr blog for the 30 day challenge! #
• Currently Browsing: http://stressreliefgames.tumblr.com/ Ranked in Google already! Position 8 for exact match, Position 11 for broad mat … #
• Currently Browsing: http://web2feel.com/ Great site for free WordPress themes. #
• Trying to stay awake. 2pm and I haven’t been to bed yet. ahhhhhhh…. #
• Currently Browsing: http://marriagepoems.tumblr.com/ How to write marriage poems site #
• sooooo tired….. no more blogging today. zzz.z….. #

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I thought Ed, Dan and the rest of the gang deserved some halftime refreshment since it’s day 15 of the Thirty Day Challenge. All your efforts are hugely appreciated guys.

Great work everyone! Enjoy….

p.s. Watch out because it’s got a real Web 2.0 kick to it!