I'm brand new to this whole cryptocurrency & STEEM thing as well. A few days ago, before Bitcoin shot way up, we bought $100 worth. STEEM also decided to go way up (I regret not buying that first!) and now it's heading back down again. So if you're going to buy, I've been told do it in small increments over a period of time, and DIVERSIFY. We want to invest $500 total, so we are doing it in $100 increments. Our next purchase will be some STEEM if it goes a bit lower.

It's a gamble, and I know nothing about the Cloud Mining. But I say, try it all. Don't put all your eggs into one basket. What I really like about Steemit is I'm also benefitting from making all of these posts, so it does double-duty!