Hi Joe, welcome to CannabisCoin and the Yes We CANN community.

Your economics depend on how much you pay for power and the hash rate you can generate for that cost. At this stage people are still selling for what I consider ridiculously low prices and unless you have a lot of hash power for little cost then buying the coins direct is probably the cheapest option for now.

There are other considerations of course. You may want to help secure the network (very civic minded of you ). You may also be looking for the experience in preparation for when mining returns rise - for that to occur the exchange price rise has to be greater than the mining subsidy halving (approximately every 46 days) and with crops expected to hit the market that is virtually a given. Of course more people will want a piece of that action so mining difficulty will rise proportionately.

You can purchase hash rate from one of the various bundling sites, that is quite reasonably priced - just point it at one of the listed pools and start collecting coins. Bear in mind that the total number of coins generated per day is now down to ~13,500 (seconds per day / 42 second block time * 6.5625 coins/block) and that will halve again in the middle of May.

Best of luck and once again, welcome.