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If you've read much of my ramblings both here and in the other places that have cared to publish my writings you will know that I'm a big fan of going niche. If you want to make more money then go niche; if you want to make every surfer count then go niche. If you want to save the world then ... well no, I'm not that fixated on matters niche to suggest that you might save the world but I'm sure you will get my drift.

Years ago generic hardcore sold but these days surfers are more attracted to those niche areas that deal with their special interests so that's where you have to go to make the money. You have to dig down into the niches till your fingers bleed ... and then you've got to dig some more.

Oddly enough that's something that many adult webmasters have known for some time now but over in mainstream ... on this one at least ... they're a little slow to understand the importance of niche. I mean just look at MySpace; right there you have this huge seething mass of people from all walks of life, just about every country on the globe and from just about every age group.

It's huge, it's worth a lot of money and it's quite likely about to go the way of the general hardcore porn site because of exactly what it is. It's so packed with people that it has no target audience anymore; it's trying to be all things to all people and not succeeding. Sure, people are still using it because they haven't found much else out there in Internet land but things are changing.

Social networking is going niche and the people in MySpace are heading for the niche sites that are out there. There's not many of them just yet ... and there's room for a lot more (hint hint) but they are not far off the verge of becoming the next big thing. They may not even rank in the top 20 social networking sites yet but that doesn't mean they won't be soon.

The three biggest movers in the niche social networking market seem to be CafeMom, Eons and Daily Strength. According to Hitwise, CafeMom seems to be appealing to MySpace users as they become parents and it's a site that has seen quite a large jump in traffic this year that has translated into what is basically a steady upward movement on their traffic graph. Hitwise suggests that 78% of the membership at CafeMom is under 34.

Eons on the other hand has a much older membership that really seems to start at around the 45 mark. Around the beginning of February their traffic graph seemed to take a bit of a dive followed by a major spike (perhaps they even went so far as to buy in traffic) which continued through to the middle of March and since then there has been a steady upward trend in their traffic graph. Even though it is headed upwards it's definitely not going up at anything like the rate that CafeMom is climbing.

The other big mover in the niche social networking sites is Daily Strength, a site that deals with health issues and other problems people might face. Hitwise will tell you that Daily Strength is a predominately female site with 93% of its visitors falling into the 25 to 54 year age group and the average user spends around 26 minutes on the site each time they visit.

So if the social networking set are beginning to become restless and MySpace begins to lose its attraction - where will the people go and what can you do to capitalize on thisshift to the niche side of social networking.

Obviously for some of us who have found ways of making money on MySpace it's time to start looking at those upcoming social networks to see how best we can make money there. It might even be time to jump in and establish a presence on some of those networks just so we can lay the groundwork while the sites are still developing.

For others who are thinking of moving into MySpace to make money perhaps it's time to think again and follow the traffic flow to some of these other sites. There's not much point working hard to set up shop in an area that's about to lose a reasonable amount of its population now is it?

Then for those of us who are a little more adventurous ... those of us who are a little more daring and who like the thrill of a challenge there's another option. Many of us are supposedly the experts of niche (sounds a bit like the Knights of Neee from Monty Python doesn't it?) so now is a time when some of us might really be able to prove how good we really are.

What is to stop us setting up other niche social networks?

Of course money could certainly be a problem but hey ... come on now ... we're entrepreneurs aren't we? What real entrepreneur ever let a lack of money stand in their way?

None that I know of so there's just no excuse! If you've got an idea of how to dig into the niche world of social networking then full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes! There are plenty of people out there who want to mix with their own special interest groups in a social setting so why not give them what they want?

It's yet another way you could be making money.