Price per TB on decent HDDs these days is around $30. So that would give you a return after just 10 months with 10 cents a day. You’re providing a service, not taking part in a get rich quick scheme. How many other businesses give you a return on investment within 10 months? How much are you expecting customers to pay after the redundancy overhead and storj’s cut have been added to your payout?
Storj is profitable. Easily profitable. For pretty much everyone. I can say that because my power costs are more than most and I still make a good profit. Something I was never able to do with mining. But you have to share more than just a few 100GB. And you should pay some attention to make sure your node has low power usage.
But yeah, these wrong expectations are in large part caused by the horrible estimator. I’ve been pointing this out for a while now and created a decent alternative that shows much more realistic numbers. It hasn’t yet been a priority to fix this, but I’m hoping the common complaints seen here will change that.
In the mean time I’ll just keep linking to the alternative here. See if that’s worth it for you. It’s fair pay, not a fortune for nothing. But absolutely fair for the service you provide.