So I heard about Storj, and how it works a few days ago. I became very interested, and am wanting to start. But I need to know more before I do so. First of all, what does setting up my server with Storj look like, and is it complicated? It is easy enough to build a server, but I’m not sure about the hole server set up with Storj. Second of all, I have been wondering about how the payment system. How does that work? Do you get paid by per TB or storage full, or what? And how long can it take to fill one storage server/node? And when would the break even point be, how long can that take? If any of you can help answer these questions and help me learn more about starting I would appreciate a lot. Thank you in advance.
Start with reading official storj documentation. If you still have unanswered questions - search forum. If still nothing — then ask that specific question.
There is no reason for anyone to copy paste or retell documentation or reiterate past discussions in this thread.
But I think I can save you some time: and shortcut the decision tree: if you don’t already have always online server and planning to build one just for storj — stop here. Don’t do that.
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Okay, I’ll read the official Storj documentation. Thank you.
I didn’t really understand what you meant here. Where you meaning If I don’t already have a server, than don’t build one?
Meaning don’t build a system just for Storj. Dosen’t worth it. You are payed by the space occupied, not allocated, and it takes ages to occupy the space. Some reported 1-2TB per year.
If you already have a running system that stais up 24/7 for other things, you could allocate some space for Storj nodes to get the taste of being a Storage Node Operator.
Today we are too many, we allocated too much space and the stored data is flate lined.
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A Storj Node is just some processes in a Docker Container: it’s small and pretty simple to set up. It also upgrades itself, and you get email if it’s detected offline - so it’s easy to maintain. Just install and forget 
You do only get paid for the space that customers pay to fill: and that can take awhile. I think a reasonable expectation would be to fill 3TB/year for the first two years. Payouts are in STORJ tokens in the first few days of every month. If you’re reading docs also look at the holdback period (partial payouts the first nine months). Also read about what it means to be on an unused subnet (as having ‘neighbors’ will slow how fast you grow).
Since space does fill slowly it’s not really worth buying new hard drives just for Storj - it’s common to start with whatever free space you have on drives you already own. Welcome, and Good Luck! 
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I understand now. And I may still get into it a little bit just to see what it’s like. But what do you suggest for making some decent money off of servers if storj really doesn’t make that much money? What are other options?
If you have spare server hardware, the memory can be sold for some great prices now. Used SSD and HDD prices are also climbing. It may be a great time to sell!
If you’re asking a more general question, like “how to make money with a computer?”… that’s a question for your favorite LLM ;). Vanilla compute is so common to be almost worthless: large Cloud providers are giving it away (Oracle has a great forever-free tier). Which makes it hard to make more than a few pennies selling capacity in a generic homelab.
If you find a way to make “some decent money off of servers” without basically starting your own business let us know! 
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Right. Storj aim is to make use of already online underutilized capacity that would have otherwise went to waste.
It cannnot be profitable to run nodes by design: if it was, storj would not need you. They could deploy containers all over the world themselves.
But if you already have a server with free space — running storagenode will help offset costs running it. In this case it’s infinite ROI: you have no extra costs but get paid.
Anecdotally, my home server consumes 150W and is always on. Electricity costs $.45/kwh where I live. Storagenode pays me about $20/month. I gladly take that electricity subsidy. Becuse the alternative is what? Not having those $20 and even more free space, which I don’t need.
But that’s it. It won’t get my kids through college. Nor is it expected to.
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These times are long gone.
I’ve been researching this on and off for many years now, have gone through many projects (storage, compute and various RPC services), but simply put there isn’t anything that will earn you any considerable amounts of money.
In most cases it won’t even cover your energy prices (assuming your energy isn’t “free”), not to speak about the hardware cost, depreciation and your time (assuming you are an adult that is working and can earn an hourly wage). And it is only getting worse - hardware prices are through the roof, energy prices are insane and constantly climbing, some of these projects are squeezing what they can out of their providers, many of them the people are doing it basically for free, earning worthless tokens, expecting that shitcoin will be the next Bitcoin in 5 years etc.
So as others have mentioned, the best approach would be to sell the drives, RAM and GPUs, if you have any, and invest those earnings to some war stocks for example.
Or run a node if you have an existing always on machine with free space, but expect to earn $15 a month after running it for three years.
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Thank you all for the great info and support. I now know everything I need to know. I won’t get into this XD. Waste of time. I don’t have a server yet, so I’d be building one, and there for losing money. Thank you all.
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But… you can always support us by becoming a Storj client. 
We will take good care of your data.
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