What is the payback for being a node operator?

[Vein]

Thinking of being a node operator - can anyone share how their payback / unit economics work?

[Stob]

Hi @Vein
One of the forum members created an earnings estimator in Google Sheets, which you can use to discover such information:

Realistic earnings estimator

The original earnings estimator is no longer online, so I’m altering this suggestion to advocate for the return of a realistic earnings estimator. In the mean time SNOs can use this community version to get a good estimate of the earnings potential. Please be respectful of others using this sheet. If someone else is looking at their results, give them a moment before overwriting their inputs or copy the sheet to your own Google account to fill in your own inputs. The sheet is protected against …

Of course it is only an estimator and as Storj stores real customer data usage patterns can change. Also the network is overdue for a change in node operator earnings and economics, which is still being worked through but has a long discussion thread -

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: The Storj economic model (node operator payout model)

During the town hall presentation that just premiered on youtube @john spoke again about reworking the Storj economic model including the economic incentive model for node operators. [image] However, no details on a direction for these changes were provided, yet feedback was requested. Alright… I guess shooting in the dark it is then (for now). I want to address a few things: Storj currently runs at a loss, subsidizing both storage and egress Demand for Storj DCS is growing rapidly What do…

[Arkina]

And if you want a real up2date example @Th3Van shares his infos here: http://www.th3van.dk/ (Keep in mind his setup is on an professional level, i’d call him a storj whale )

[snorkel]

In short, you get paid for data you store (1.5$/TB) and for data downloaded from you aka engress (20$/TB downloads and 10$/TB repairs). This is now, but Storj team can change this and they will, and the general asumption is these prices will be reduced. Also in the future there will be private satellites with their own reward scheme.
As data traffic, depends on your geolocation of public IP, how many nodes are on your /24 subnet, how many nodes are world wide and custommer needs. It’s imposible to predict, and the historic traffic is not a good model.
But as an exemple, real historic data for some location in EU , for my 2 year old node:

• in 2021 stored data hit 3TB/node/year - earnings 57$;
• in 2022 stored data hit 5TB/node/year - earnings 262$.
• the engress varried widely, I’ve seen between 250-900 GB/month, after it hit 1TB.
  In 2 years, this node made 320$ and now stores 8TB of data and is not full.
  When the node is full, the engress keeps droping monthly because it fills with long term stored data, that is not accesed so often. I repeat, this is until now; we can’t predict what the future holds, what are the plans of Storj labs and how they will affect SNOs.
  A SNO (storagenode operator) must take into account hardware cost, electricity cost and maintenance cost, for mantaining the node online 24/7 and no sudden shutdowns; so UPS is a must, also a reliable Internet connection and hardware, with preferably Enterprise grade CMR HDD (no SMR HDD or SSD).

[Ruskiem]

Yea its like 15-23$/mo for a full 7,5TB HDD in my case.
And it got full after some 15 to 20 months.