I think the best advice is to buy bitcoin and hold - or if you feel you up to trading when its so volatile no reason not to try your luck... I am sure you can make money mining too but right now I am trying to hold bitcoin, trade where it makes sense and minimize my losses which is quite an effort considering how volatile/insane the markets are right now... Just my two cents worth I'm using two different bots - one on btc-e for btc trading (against the dollar) and one on cryptsy for trading all the crypto currencies there (to build my equity in BTC, LTC and XPM)...