No offense OP, but I have trouble understanding how are you willing to invest in bitcoin mining apparently without even knowing about online exchanges, dwolla etc.

Reminds me of when my wife tried to explain to her coworkers how we are taking additional income from online poker.
She passionately talked about how it's not really gambling but a game of skill and a duel of minds, where you need to exploit your opponents weaknesses to be rewarded, how we're playing several hours a day and having made so-and-so much money...

And after all that, her coworker said: "yeah, it all sounds neat and all, just too bad you can't take the virtual money that you won from inside the computer and actually buy something with it"...