FYI
I've noticed a trend in Bitcoin forums, chats and groups at VK.com (our local competitor to Facebook): people used to discuss a lot what graphics card to choose and how to build a farm, but suddenly a few days ago people start offering their farms for sale a lot, often quite cheap, and there is much less GPU mining discussion remaining. People start realising that now is a perfect time to cash their rigs out before the market is dumped with cheap used GPUs and mining rigs, because ASICs are there and growing amazingly fast, as is difficulty.
So there is my final advice for newbies before I break free from this jail:
Don't buy GPUs for mining! It's too late. The difficulty will continue to rise fast, and BTC/USD isn't going to rise significantly for some time. Instead, it's likely going to dive a little under 100 and stay there for a while. But don't worry, you still have chances to become early adopter!
Invest in ASICs! Yeah, that's where is all the momentum right now. Grab as much ASIC hashpower as you can afford. Right now, you have little options and will probably have to wait and even risk, but in a few months there will be finally a real competition in ASIC market. Alternatively, you can grab some PT ASICMINER shares: they bring solid (and growing!) dividends and they are seriously underpriced right now. I've already grabbed some at 2.5 and now I'm watching as it steadily rises towards 3.
Watch out for new opportunities! Grab you chance to become early adopter! Using your brain will greatly help in this
Diversify! Because you know, anything can fail, but it's VERY unlikely that everything will fail.
This is my 5th post, and with 4:04 forum time I'm finally breaking free to
troll participate in discussions out of newbie jail. See you!