LOL, have you seen the Namecoin difficulty increase, it's going from 3767 to 18080 on 13/06/2011
Currently it is far more profitable to mine NMC than BTC, but that is about to change.
You've got a few days to seriously boost your income. Then join me in the speculation game

Namecoins are mined in exactly the same way as Bitcoins, and uses exactly the same mining software (phoenix,GUIminer,poclbm, etc)
http://dot-bit.org for more info
Namecoin is too nerdy to ever 'take off' in the public. I do understand how it works but I don't expect 99% of people to 'get it'.
It's a good project though.