I made quite a bit of money in it a few years back when I learned some of my "gold rush" history and figured out that the shovel sellers made a lot more than the miners.
So I found a way to sell shovels by betting against Butterfly Labs and their "two more week" delays.
I bought about $25k of FPGA miners, and turned them around for a very tidy profit, which did include mining with some while I was selling others. Have to test my goods, you know. ;) That was producing over 1 BTC/day back when it was around $100, which I proceeded to use to purchase a lot of silver.
Did I net more than I would have purchasing a bunch at $1 and selling at $1000? No, but one can't exactly know what's coming ahead, so I chose a low risk, moderate return path. Worst case, I could sell the FPGA boards to people doing numerical analysis and the like (which is what I did with some leftovers from my mining when they weren't worth running anymore).
I still hold some as one of many long term hedges against the dollar tanking. I tend a bit more pessimistic about the dollar than many people on this forum, so I have a non-trivial chunk of my wealth in assorted hedges and non-dollar value stores.
If you want to get into it now, though? You're too late to really do much other than day trading with it. The miners are all heavily industrial era mining now, with huge factories run by people who design and fab their own ASICs.