I would recommend buying a small amount of shares to try out for a few weeks. The qASICs are cheap right now and the 2nd gen pre-shares should be very good once they go online in mid/late Jan. I am currently selling qASICs to buy 2nd gen shares with a decent discount through the referral system. I am happy to split the referral fee if you are buying any 2nd gen ASICs from the main LTCgear website. Send me a PM and I can send you my referral link. There are many good resellers for qASIC shares if you want to buy a small amount.
Two other companies to look at are GAWminers and Hashprofit.com. I can't say much about the second one beyond it looks interesting, but the first is a US based company that may reduce some of the risk.
Best of luck with mining.
Hashprofit seems 2 shady for me. Would stay away from them.
All of their sales ended anyway. It does seem a bit shady with the tie in to this ProfitCoin stuff. Too complicated and unclear who and where they are. If they accepted CCs or Paypal, then it would be more interesting. I did find the hashing rates interesting when trying to figure out what 2nd gen LTCgear shares might make next month.