the little guy can do other things to start his crypto investments:
1.) Keep on steeming. You're making/mining crypto coins in form of Steem which you can exchange for Bitcoins later. You never know if your post is the next viral post that makes 2000-10000 USD!
2.) Start exploring the exchanges. If you have spare dollars, start by buying the cheap altcoins... 3-5 coins are still at the cents level... position yourself to buy these while they are cheap.. who knows when they hit a dollar or more.
3.) Keep buying bitcoins at small quantities.. and hold them. I think you would have a higher ROI if you buy and hold coins rather than invest in cloud mining if you don't have thousands of $$$ to start.
4.) I'm invested in Genesis-mining AND Hashnest. Check out the market place of Hashnest where you can purchase Hash Power and mine Litecoins.. the ROI is estimated at 3-4 months. You can reinvest your profits for more HP and keep doing it until you come up with a plan for profit/reinvestments.
5.) If you are more daring, use other people's money. BORROW. Only for those with nerves of steel. Say you can borrow 7000$ from a rich friend who won't mind being paid off in 2 years. You have 1 year to ROI and completely pay off your debt.
Well I could say the above are from my experience :)