You can profit from mining, but the key is to invest into enough Gh/s and carefully watch your return on investment.  However, you need to reinvest into more mining equipment as difficulty rises while keeping an eye on the price of bitcoin. At the same time, you need to carefully invest into the next generation of mining equipment.  The large mining farms can't afford to reinvest into 3rd generation mining equipment because they're still trying to pay for the return on the 1st or 2nd gen equipment.  I was talking with a corporate farm owner that had invested 500k into 1st gen mining equipment which only did double digit Gh/s, now they're stuck and can't afford to get the single digit Th/s due in 2014.

To sum up, a miner can profit but I would say the entry point now is $6k - $12k in early 2014, whereas before $1k could get you mining at a profit in early 2013.  That being said, mining is very high risk and requires a lot of thought and constant calculation to maintain a positive ROI.