Just be real aware there is also risk involved with mining. Ordering an ASIC today will put you at the back of the line in the long list of pre-orders. BFL has sold 1000's. bASIC has just cut off pre-orders for their first batch, but you can order for the second batch said to be shipping sometime in January. If I were to make an educated guess, you most likely wont see your ASIC miner (ordered TODAY) until late January no matter where you ordered it from. Don't let this deter you from ordering because bitcoin is a great thing! But you need to know there is going to be a wait. By the time you actually get your ASIC, the mining difficulty should have increased 10x+ minimum (likely WAY more). If I had to make an educated guess it most likely will be around 30x+. But no one can really say for sure. Whats that mean? A Jalapeno will yield .07 bitcoin per 24 hours with a 10x increase from today's difficulty. That number also took into consideration the block halving too. Converted into USD that's somewhere around $.80 a day on today's market value. Of course Bitcoin may rise (I think it will if it follows suit with pasted difficulty increases), so .07 bitcoin may be worth more than what it is currently today. But then again, once ASIC miners are in full effect we may see a lot of people selling off their coins rapidly to try and get their investment back. This could in turn substantially decrease the value of bitcoin for awhile too. No one really knows, and currently its just all speculation.
In my opinion, in order to really dive head first into this, you will need a 30+ g/hash device. A Jalapeno is a great device for someone who wants to test the waters. It will allow you to make some coin (not much), but allow you to play with the market with your own generated coins. Theres still a lot of unknown factors. Ship times, power consumption, difficulty increase, bitcoin value, and other things that will determine the long term numbers/profit.
Again, I am not trying to scare you off, but its something you should be aware of before investing. You need to know what your getting yourself into
-Ryan
