For me the best way to get Bitcoins was to buy at Coinbase. You could buy at localbitcoins or some other way, but I wanted to buy with US dollars and I didn't want to get into mining.

Once you buy, you can either just hold those coins or can move them to an exchange that allows short term trading. I use Poloniex but there are other similar sites. You can potentially trade to make some profit which you can put back into buying more Bitcoins.