The mining difficulty is what gets us brother. I feel you, it would be great, but I doubt we get 13 months out of the S5s. The next-gen gear is either already being mined with by manufacturers or it is almost ready. The mining difficulty is going to go high, very high, and the people who gamble on next gen to make money, well they will gamble.
Bitcoin mining is not for a profit at this point. It is for people like me and others who want to help keep something going, enjoy this crazy sometimes spastic community, and see it as a hobby. Building your dream car, or overclocking PCs, or etc type of hobby where you spend. Some people trade their power bill for BTC through mining.
In my opinion, unless you have about 200 - 500k, make a deal with a reputable MFG company like Spondoolies, and move to the right place for real cheap power do not expect a profit. Do not mine for a profit only buying a few units.
Don't get me wrong plenty of people told me the same thing and hear I have with more than many and I guess less than anyone making money, but the only people making money from mining have either done what I said (which is still a huge gamble) or, they have free power.
If you want to be in bitcoin and think the price is going to go to the moon, buy coin. Make sure you can trust people you deal with. Watch who and where you buy from depending on your needs and keep in mind Bitcoin is not anonymous. That is a myth.
You could always try renting some hash, see the link in my sig. I like doing business with these guys. I think they are fair, and do their best to be straight up with customers. I sometimes want to gamble, very rare but I call it gambling bc it all is and I rent and throw it at Kano or CKs pools. I may even rent to grab some of an ALT that seems to have good technology, but still, I do not do it to make money. I go into it knowing I've lost that money and anything I make is awesome!
I wish it wasn't this way, and maybe one day things will be different, but I have to think the true "glory days" of mining are past us.
Even if you mined strictly to have the coin, you will have more coin by simply buying the coin. Today's prices are a perfect entry point to bitcoin. I believe it is going up to 270, 300, 320, etc and will find another floor about 90 dollars higher than where we are now, and another year or so the same.
I would love for everyone to run a full node and keep no less than 3 or 4 miners running forever, but I am not a fool, at least not in that wishing department
By the way, nicehash is the UK service and westhash the US one. Same company as far as I know. If you see posts from Kano, CK is a mod, and PhillipMA you can trust them.
Don't tell anyone your personal information and never give someone coin. There is a guy named OGnasty who has an amazing reputation for handling escrow. You give him money, the other person sends you product, once you are happy with product OG releases the money.
Do not do it any other way because there are sharks here man, people who make there living stealing from honest folks. No matter how street smart you may be, there is trash around who can take it to another level.
Be smart and don't tell anyone exactly what you have, especially financial information, where you live, etc.
Good Luck!
*Significant Edit*
Sidehack who replied to you is also someone who shoots straight. He sells good products, and is a good guy even when grumpy with my nubish questions
If I was making a list of good people here it would be a decent size one, so don't think everyone is a scammer, but there are enough to where you should always be safe.
How fast does the mining difficulty increase? i ask this because i was looking at this as more than one possible idea...
Firstly, i am always looking to make another buck.. so a little extra hash every year would be nice....
Secondly, i was thinking if the miners paid themselves off in 13 months, then it could generate an $900-1,000 USD after it paid itself off.. just going off the 0.12cent power rate...
Thirdly, i have been contemplating upping my solar system to 3-4kW system to offset my entire house cost a month in electricity.. since summer months here in sunny Florida are killing us and every year they have been pushing to raise the solar cost and its only bound to increase soon.. they are proposing to jump it from 0.12 to 0.15 by 2017... So i would like to get ahead of the curve, but the time of payoff on such a size system takes longer the larger it is.. due to invertors and wiring cost increasing as size increases to accommodate it all, so if anything if i ran enough bitcoin miners to use the solar installed it would drop the payback to 1-2 years instead of multiple years... so if anything it could be a way to pay off solar install much much quicker..
Fourthly, after the solar has been offset by profit from bitcoin mining, the electricity at that point would be relatively cost-less to run if i kept them within the production range of the solar system.. so in my mind that equals profit.. or would the profit depreciate so much in the future to not really let this all work out?? Florida does offer net-metering even though i dont utilize it currently, so grid usage at night would be offset by solar production during the day if i went that route..