An area of Facebook which is making several companies huge amounts of money is the applications that run on Facebook. There is for example, a mafia game on Facebook which has been hugely popular with millions of users. And there are many other companies making huge amounts of money with Facebook apps (applications).

So what opportunity is there for you?

Firstly I would suggest you get on Facebook and look at these apps, see what is happening and see which are the popular ones and start looking how they make their money.

Once you have understood what interests people you can start thinking about developing your own application, so if you are not a programmer yourself maybe you can hire someone off ScriptLance.com, Guru.com or Elance.com to write it for you.

Actually I should say this isn't a small undertaking because programming projects can often go far beyond their initial scale. Programming projects never seem to go smoothly in my experience so bear that in mind before getting started.

Once the app has been developed and you have got your app online you are going to have to promote it. So then you might have to spend some money on advertising and hope that it takes off in a viral way - a lot of these applications are set up to be viral which obviously keeps advertising and marketing costs down!

This is definitely an area to look into if you are familiar with programming or know of people who are. The only negative to such an approach is that it can take time to make money this way and if you don't have the time, money or inclination to invest in such projects it may be better to think about a different approach.

But as I have said, this approach has made a lot of people very rich.

Facebook and other social networking sites such as MySpace, bebo and Twitter are not the only outlets for apps. Another very lucrative market, increasingly so, is the mobile phone market. For example, there are loads of app makers making a lot of money from the 'Apps for iPhone' store.

One example - which wouldn't be particularly expensive, difficult or take a long time to create - is the iFart app. It's very popular and was number one over the Christmas period in 2008, and literally does exactly what the name implies, which is that it makes farting noises through your phone.

I think it sells for 0.99 cents and I believe last time I checked the creator of the iFart app (InfoMedia) has made more than 500,000 dollars from it. It has been the number one download at the iphone store and its creator has even been featured on TV with it.

So I would say by all means focus on creating an application that can be sold via Facebook for example but don't think of it as the sole outlet for such products. You could even sell these products via your website. But before you jump in make sure you do your research, see if it interests you and see if there is an opportunity to make some money.

Dominic Allport helps current and aspiring business owners greatly maximize their chance of success and significant profits.