Hi there, welcome.
Cloud mining is like having someone else hold your private key. Not recommended. Mining POW coins is quite important and there's still an opportunity to ROI if you get the correct gear. That's my primary approach to collecting Litecoin. If you don't feel like dealing with mining, then a diversified investment in various coins is probably the most appropriate approach. LTC and BTC are buys right now. I would also endorse NXT. Don't be tempted to enter pump and dumps. In my opinion it's anti-crypto, and at the end of the day you could walk away with nothing except wasted time.
How do I know what's a pump and dump and what's not? Also it seems like you're saying if I don't want to mine, then I could also simply buy various coins? I've read that somewhere and was wondering how to do that. Also, I've heard good things about Litecoin and was originally going to mine it until I read posts advising otherwise.