ok, now I am running profitability estimates using the Antminer s-3 numbers and my local power costs. Very interesting, it seems the concept comes down to converting electricity into Bitcoin. The following parameter has me confused:

---
Difficulty override
The estimated difficulty change from BlockExplorer is used by default. Enter a percent value here if you want use a different one.
---

Their default is -6.1% change in difficulty but from what I hear difficulty goes up not down. On the TradeBlock chart difficulty recently jumped rather largely. I replaced the -6% with a +5 and can see that the prediction is for declining profitability. +10% is definitely trouble. I will keep on reading but are these estimators accurate? What % makes sense to plug in?

Thanks os2sam. Sounded too good to be true, probably is. They did not mention anything about difficulty adjustments. Just massive jumps in Bitcoin price.

Sorry for more newbie questions but I am interested still. Would it be possible to participate in a pool from my own home with computers in my basement and a fiber optic internet connection? Being the quiet geeky type I could really take to that.

Today was my first introduction to bitcoin mining. I watched a webinar by some guys who bought 100 machines and have them set up in a data warehouse. On their next purchase of 300 machines they are offering to sell machines for us to all own individually. I am guessing a lot of you are familiar with this. Of course it sounds good with the numbers they show.

Is this a pool? Is it potentially a great opportunity?

Thanks all, Brandon