I've been running a witness for over 3 years. Started off mining when that was still a thing. I reconditioned one old machine with a new motherboard an memory just to run a node. Later I built a brand new machine that cost me around $2000.00 in order to be able to run a backup node. That was in January of 2017. I also added a second internet connection just for the backup node. Since then it has cost me over $120 a month plus wear and tear on the equipment every month. $195 a month if you include the other internet connection at the bar I rarely use for anything besides steem anymore. Due to slow replays I had to buy 2 new SSD drives for my witness nodes later in 2017.
So how much have a made as a witness. Well it's more like how much have I lost. The only time I operated in the black was when steem was over $4. My max blocks a day was 4 and that wasn't even every day. I now sign less than one block a day so that is less than 1 steem a day. At current that is 16.9 cents a day or about $5.07 a month. That is a $115 to $190 loss a month to support the steem block chain. Now I have never powered down to sell any of the steem I made as a witness. That means all that steem is only worth 16.9 cents now. So I never made over $4 a day. This puts me way in the red.
So how did I plan to pay for running my node? Well I treated the steem power as an investment. A really bad choice it turns out. I paid the bills with fiat hoping steem would accrue in value. Some day I would be able to sell some steem and replace the money I spent. A really bad decision. I upvoted my own posts to try to make up the difference. Something a top witness can do with 1 vote a day. Even with all my 61m vests I can't even break even.
Now every one of my posts is being flagged for excessive payout. Apparently 40 cents is too much for a post to make. Yet the person flagging me: themarkymark upvotes his own posts with both his accounts and alt accounts. One of his votes is worth more than 10 of mine. Why doesn't he flag himself for excessive payouts? Why doesn't steemflag rewards flag him for it? Why doesn't steemcleanrs harass them? Why does steemflagrewards upvote him? Why does anyx upvote him? The hypocrisy of these people is beyond reproach.
You can find the truth of why this is happening here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@fubar-bdhr/the-true-story-of-why-i-left-steemcleaners-and-my-history-with-them
They won't be happy until I leave steem/steemit or end up dead from the stress of their harassment.