Any help with either mining tips or anything to know well getting in the game would be helpful.
I suggest exploring the world of altcoins. With the new redlists being proposed, I think we'll see an even greater acceleration of altcoin awareness by the mainstream. In my viewpoint, in the near future merchants that accept Bitcoin will slowly integrate altcoins into their existing POS hardware and accept multiple coins using the same equipment.
It might be late for Bitcoin, but there are altcoins out there now only a few months old.