worst advice ever is to sugest anyone to buy from butterfly labs!!!
second thing, right now 5gh is worthless!
hell, you need at least 200gh to start mining.
one more thing you are forgetting, there is no constant income from mining.
your miner is earning less and less with every difficulty jump and you need to invest in new mining gear to keep your income stable and constant.
sorry bro, just forget about it.
even if you have good faith in all this, it is pointless to try anything with $500 budget.
Yep, couldn't agree more. By the time you get your order confirmation, you are pretty much out of date. The pre-order crap is a game that certain unsavory hardware companies play. They take your money, build the hardware, then mine with it to "test" it. When the hardware is finally shipping you're so far behind the difficulty curve that you will NEVER make your money back. The hardware company ends up making all the money you were supposed to make while you're waiting for the pre-order to ship.
Anyway, 5GH for $274 is horrible. 3 AntMiner U1's from jonesgear is half that and you get more GH. Even then, you won't make your money back ~ever~.
You're best off trying to trade alt coins with that $500. At least with trading, you ~could~ make money off your $500. Mining you'll never make a cent.