While I'm waiting for filecoin to come out I've been running storj on an ok machine to see what I could make. I'm only two months in, but already I've seen acceptable results. Anything over $12 a month should make it worth-while by my estimate.
This is my first machine:
With 358.39GB (21% capacity) I was able to make the following:
As you can see, the first month was a total loss as far as storj earned. The machine was still slowly building up shares. What I gained in the first month is a great 'reputation' score, it's maxed out from having an impeccable uptime and decent speeds. The last I heard was that storj still gives out shares randomly, but being up for every opportunity already helps and when they switch to reputation I should be set.
Into this second month I'm pretty happy with my 14 storj at the moment.
So much so that I felt bold enough to spin up a second machine:
A brand new life into the world. So young, 0 allocs. I expect a loss for the first month with this one as well, and possibly even the second, we'll see. It will be random based on how much people decide to use it, so I could suddenly see both become unprofitable. All the same if I see the results scale then I'll probably continue adding machines :D
When/if filecoin comes out I'll likely race them against each other and keep the survivor.