Getting your coin to 0.5 thru trading is a good thing, why think of another kind of investment or method to spend your bitcoin when you have established your knowledge on trading. I would suggest you to continue trading and if you have enough to put up your own online store then set it up. At least you control it than letting other to manage your bitcoin.
Learn and do some research on what you can do with your trading profits. $250 is a good enough amount of money to open a small store on a site that accepts bitcoin payments. There are many possible ways to work with to make lot of bitcoins with some assured profits but we must learn few techniques before going to invest there.
Yes you have to learn and research first before you invest anywhere. This is very important i say this because once I didnt and I got scammed kind of by investing money and the money just dissapeared into nowhere. Never trust anything instantly what you invest in triple check it search information etc etc.