I have affordable electricity that will let me run an intermediate setup. The downside is that I am only willing to risk $500 in equipment right now. My question to you guys is whether or not I am too late in the game for this amount of investment costs. Keep in mind I am a beginner. I do not know much about mining equipment. I am not even sure how much I can make per day running it effectively. However, any help or responses that could help me would be awesome!
Being a miner myself I must say that it probably won't be profitable for you. It's a nice and nerdy hobby to fiddle with miners, but the times for profit are gone wrt to the current difficulty and btc price. Bitmain's S7 is around the corner, this will increase the difficulty a lot and will make older mining hardware obsolete.
TL;DR
Skip the mining business, buy btc instead. Now it's a good time to grab some while their cheap.
