Last week I attended a conference on monetising mobile -- how to make money by writing and selling programs to run on mobile devices. Over 200 people attended the conference with 60% of them being developers.

Two things struck me about the event, or should I say about the opportunity being presented to the audience.

• Firstly there are some folks out there who have made a packet of money by writing small trivial but popular apps to run on mobile phones.
• The second thing that jumped out at me was the fact that most of the presenters were missing a golden opportunity -- the netbook.

We were reminded by Dietrich Banschbach, (Director EMEA SSG Scale Influence, Intel) that by the end of this year there would be over a 100 million netbooks in circulation. Now to me that looks like an opportunity not to miss. Despite this obvious opportunity, nearly all the other presenters at the conference were focussed on talking about making money on such things as the iPhone and how software engineers were joining the gold rush.

In away I'm pleased that the netbook opportunity is still a secret -- at least I can get my friends to make their first million before everyone spots the opportunity (please wait a month to give me a head start!).

Much of the success in making money in the 'apps for mobile' space is down to the various stores that the app developer can use to sell his product.

The good news is, is that there is an app store for netbook apps, where developers can register and sell the fruits of their labour. Even better, there are some juicy prizes for the best applications that are submitted. You can find out more about this golden opportunity by visiting the Intel AppUp Store.

One last request, when you've become stinking rich please drop me an email and I'll send you my bank account details.