What I am doing as I have 0 miner hardwares just yet, is hitting particular altcoin faucets, especially the lower cooldown period ones and working for a couple hours or so a day to trade somewhere, such as Poloniex for parts of a bitcoin per trade.
Some good coins I found for the moment, I am sorry, but I can't spill, I work on faucets to secure them in a local wallet or so and soon exchange them. I need to see what happens. Sure, they may be smal pieces of single coins, but you do know already, I hope, that it all keeps adding up.