Hey artwilliams - I'm pretty sure you can turn off email notifications in your settings, or profile - they annoy the shit out of me also, so I asked a friend who told me you can do this - I haven't yet which is why I aren't posting a guide on how to do it.
You can make money by using: facebook.com/ads
Its a little like Google adwords, but you can target age groups, male/female, countries etc - but they're much tighter on their guidelines and I haven't checked to see if you can advertise adult stuff... there are a lot of dating ads though, I've seen them.
You can also make a Facebook app: facebook.com/apps/
Then you can add some advertising on there or think of some other way of monetising it - but it seems most of them don't - so I don't know why people have made them
