Do you want to Mine Alt-Coins? You need to read this first !
Let me start out by saying Good Luck in your mining endeavors.
Be Very Careful which coins you mine,why?, Because you do not want to mine coins that's difficulty is too high for your hardware.
If you mine coins that have a high difficulty, and you do not have the hardware to match you are wasting time, and money.
For Instance Siacoin, while I think it is a good coin, the difficulty is too high for most gpu miners to see any profit, because the coin value is too low for the difficulty, add in the fact there is ASIC miners coming out for Siacoin and your GPU mining rigs will be useless soon enough for Sia.
If you want to mine with a CPU, or a GPU, DO NOT MINE Bitcoin, Ether, or any other coin of that caliber, because you simply will be wasting your time, and your money.
Lets use this as an example GO HERE https://whattomine.com/ and fill in the information and see just what YOU are expected to make on the coin you was going to mine.
I have an RX480 8GB 
so I selected that ok so my best bet would be to mine Musicoin at $4.51 a day profit so that would be $135 a month give or take, Worth it ??? Maybe for some it is, ok now what if I had 4 RX480 8GB Cards? $14.20 profit per day or $426 a month worth it? These are just estimates but clearly the more HASH power you have the more your going to mine, and the more profit your going to make.
OK what if I only had 1 R9 280X card and I mined Musicoin with that hmm.... ok so $0.97 a day, and about $29 a month Worth it? Probably NOT right ...
You see where I am going with this, If you do not have the Hardware to mine you are better off Investing in the coins directly IMO.
Are you Serious about mining, Do you at least know how to assemble computer hardware, I would recommend if you have some money to invest in building a miner, and if you can find any GPU's Available at the time to pick up at least 4 or these 
and a good power supply such as a 
Find a coin that offers a decent price vs. Mining Difficulty, whose developers are Active, and have strong plans for the future.
Mine the hell out of that coin, or coins.
Go to https://coinmarketcap.com/ to get an idea, find out what Exchange/s it is traded on and make an account there such as
https://bittrex.com/
https://poloniex.com
https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/
I hope this at least gives someone some idea of what is needed to mine, and actually make a profit vs. doing it for fun etc...
Thank You.
yes ...today, you need a decent hardware in order to mine coins otherwise you will be paying the electricity that you use to mine with the money you will make with the mining
nice post
I recommend to start mining with nicehash - very easy for new users, I made a tutorial about it:)
https://steemit.com/mining/@cardboard/the-easiest-way-to-start-mining-crypto-with-your-pc-tutorial-for-newbies
good to know
Just joined Bittrex 👍🏽🎉
Thanks for great info.
Crypto Mining will always be sexy!
good read and very informative. I've wanted to mine something but i realize it's better for me to just but.
im glad I clicked your post. I've never seen that website.. seems better than coinwarz too
Use the website cryptoCompare, they have all the mining profitabiltiy lists, it really comes in handy
I have 2 decent GPUs I bought before they all surged in price and I still don't think it's worth it. Really feels like you need a rig with 5 GPUs in it or something. I even looked up Burstcoin and I have 20TB and it's still not enough profit, IMO. You still need at least 50TB to make an okay return. Mining in itself it's just too inaccessible for people who can't afford the hardware.