Does Ripple give an advantage to early adopters? I really believed in the idea behind Bitcoins from the start, and because I was an early adopter, I made some nice profit.

Now I forecast a big future for Ripple too, but I don't see many ways to turn this into profit. I can start hoarding loads of XRP, but it doesn't seem likely they will become valuable in the future, because as soon as they do, transaction fees will be lowered. Another option is to start a new gateway, and because they're pretty scarce now, it may become one of the popular ones in the future.

Is there any other way I can profit as an early adopter?
Advantages to being an early Ripple adopter:


Being able to get a lot of free ripples during their first distribution
Being able to establish oneself as a reliable and reputable Gateway that will be a go-to place for everyone
Establishing oneself as the first business to do something with Ripple - be it selling something or offering some services. Other early adopters would be then inclined to spend their ripples on your service just for the sake of using the system


Generally, there is not that vast of an advantage for being an early Ripple adopter as compared to using Bitcoin. That doesn't mean, however, that the advantages are not there.