The next step is trying to figure out what value you can create by starting a bitcoin business.
Quite a lot of value
Imagine having $1000 by the time its in mtgox/bitstamp/bitinstant its normally worth 5% less ($950) you then end up buying bitcoin nearer to the high price then the low price of the day, adding on another 1-2% ($930). which today lets call it $111 average will get you 8.38BTC.
Now imagine you have a wholesaler that sales products 20% below retail price. Your $1000 becomes worth $1200 and if you set the bitcoin exchange rate at the 15 minute low (lets call it $105) you can get 11.43BTC without the worries of ID validation with exchanges or 2 day delay.
Simply because people hand you the 11.43BTC for $1200 worth of goods. and you pay your fiat to the wholesaler, not a bitcoin exchange.
I have considered this, but you have to figure in the retail side of things. Getting people to buy your stuff is not all that easy. For my wife's shop we would usually pay on average about 30% of the retail price. But from there you need to factor in getting people to actually buy your product. Advertising costs money, if you have a product and you are selling online (she was mainly a local store which had its own overhead to factor in) you need to either have the product shipped to you and stored so that you can then pack it up yourself and ship it or you can do drop shipping where the wholesaler ships for you, but then you have to deal with more competition of other drop shippers and the fact that you cannot inspect the quality of the item before it gets to your customer which could tarnish your reputation. And then you have people who take up your time asking all sorts of customer service types of questions about the quality of the item, the speed of delivery, money back guarantees, etc. And if there is anything wrong with the product you need to refund and have it shipped back to the wholesaler or have your name tarnished.
Meanwhile, you have your product sitting there advertised for sale while the price of bitcoin goes up when you could have just converted your money in the first place.
I am not saying selling things for Bitcoin is a bad idea as opposed to simply exchanging, just that there is a lot that goes into it.