Low bets and long term investments

Hi there,

I'am a newbie on this forum. I decided to educate myself in Spread Betting. I don't have much free money and I don't want to risk to much.

1) If I don't have much free money (500$) is it a good idea to involve in spread betting? Perhaps CFD or forex will be beter for me?
2) Is spread betting more cost effective then forex, CFD?
3) Is it possible to invest less then 1$ in for example gold on CFD, futures or spread betting market?
4) Is spread betting good for long term investments? (For example I think, that silver will be much more expensive in one year and I want to invest minimum sum of money in silver). I mean can rollover fees crash my investment even if silver will go up?
5) Which platform do you think is proper for minimum bets and long term investmensts? (low minimum stake, no or low rollover charges, wide quantity of products - I don't care about spreads in long term invstmets, do I?)

Thanks,

I don't know enough about CFDs to comment. I spreadbet and for trades that I want to last for more than a couple of months, they have "Forwards". This has a higher spread but you don't have to pay roll over costs (it's covered by the extra spread). Sign up to the likes of Tradindex for a demo account and you'll see what I mean.