Yeah, essentially, the difficulty has made it almost impossible for the 'average' home miner to make any significant amount of bitcoin per day, never mind achieving positive ROI... It's a tough go, and if you wade into the waters, you need to have some sort of edge, ie. facilities available, cheap or free juice, and be prepared in any case for a tough slog...
The thing that makes it really tough is competing against those who are selling you your hardware (at a price that may barely allow you to make your investment back, if you're lucky). In addition, they are not only mining with the loads of the same hardware (at a significantly lower price); at the same time, they are increasing the previously mentioned difficulty WITH THE MONEY YOU JUST PAID THEM.
This is based on the assumption that you actually receive your mining gear in the agreed upon time frame and there are no issues with it, which is not, by any stretch, a sure thing.
The key for the home miner is to realize big riches are not for us in home. I now have 10 s-3's with 2 on order. I have 1 sp20 on order.
It is cold in NJ and winter power rates are back in effect. so my 16 cent drops to 13 cent and the welcome heat makes it more like 9 cents.
With diff jumps under 5 % I can mine from now until April. I won't make a lot of money but they will profit over power cost for:
DEC
JAN
FEB
MARCH
APRIL
Come APRIL they will have some resale value.
Lastly S-3's are easy to run.
So what will my machines earn net profit most likely 1k or 200 usd a month.
No fix for the home miner other then a huge BTC price jump. Which the bigger companies may not be as mobile to catch on to as quickly as I can.
Put in other words I can go from my 12 s-3's and 1 sp20 (7th) to 14th faster then a 2ph farm can go to 4ph
so if coins jump from 375 usd to 1000 usd in 1 week I will 2x my gear faster then he will. but in 30 days time he will pass me again.
I will also be flatlined at 14th.