There will be different storage levels, and different storage contracts that node operators can participate with, but yes your node will have to be online 24/7 to have a good reputation and be able to participate.

I think the team has got their acts together and remember Storj is an object store more similar to Amazon S3 than dropbox or google drive. Third parties can then build their own versions of dropbox on top of Storj.

To note the best seller of Storj is that the data can only be accessed by the users that upload it so that in itself is very attractive, I'm sure, to a lot of people.

Exactly, things are changing with V3 to improve reliability. However even with V2 various factors were influencing payouts including bandwidth and uptime so it is not something new. To be able to compete with mainstream storage providers storage node operators need to also be reliable and in my opinion that is for the best. You shouldn't think that just because someone has a spare HD they can put it towards Storj and be able to make a profit. But don't let that discourage you, fill in the form as best as you can and see if you get an invite when the time comes.

There isn't a calculator right now as the team is working on a major upgrade (Storj V3) and planning to release the software for sharing storage in early 2019.
The best thing you can do right now is to register your interest to become a storage node operator (used to be called farmer) at this link:

https://storj.io/sign-up-farmer

Once registered you will receive a survey to fill in with details of your setup and that will allow you to receive an invite for when the software goes live.
Invites will be sent in different batches, depending on your setup you could be in the first batch of invites or in a following one.

As far as I know,

1) Same as it has always been, used to reward Storage Node Operators for sharing their free storage, that means the storage is paid in STORJ by the network itself, anyone else developing on it may accept other type of currencies and crypto however the storage itself is paid in STORJ so there will be more demand for tokens as the storage usage grows. It also offers discounts to end users paying for their own storage in STORJ. I also gathered that the current and future Open Source partners may get some revenue sharing for using the network with their own software and tools. Not sure if it's revenue sharing in STORJ or not, but here's how it reads on their own blogpost:

https://storj.io/blog/2018/10/open-source-revenue-models-in-the-cloud-era/

"The Storj platform can generate a sustainable revenue stream for open source projects every time their code is used on the network. As decentralization continues its rise to support new web and technology infrastructure, these mutually beneficial opportunities shouldn’t be overlooked."

2) Not sure about your incentive, in my case I hold the token for future use on the platform, I also believe the project will do well in the future seen all the new partners and their own projects. If all goes well more storage usage means more demand for the token to pay for the actual storage as the only ones offering storage are Node Operators (farmers).

3) So far they have accepted ETH, BTC and STORJ not sure what the plans are for FIAT but I believe they used Stripe in the past. As I mentioned above whatever they accept from customers, developers and corporations will have to be converted to STORJ to pay for the storage on the network side.

Hope this helps. If you join their community you may get more precise answers.

I'm only replying with what I know from following Storj blogs and community.

1. I think that is positive, the more players in the decentralized cloud space the better, surely each player will have their own benefit and their offering will differ. It will be better for end users as it brings more competition to the space.

2. You are relying on V2 stats, which don't yet reflect the new V3 network has it hasn't launched yet for farmers, to be called Storage Node Operators in V3. We should wait and see how it goes when we are able to try it out. Save your 2TB drive for when you will get given the opportunity to try the new sharing software. In the meantime register for the waitlist, I did and received a survey to fill in with minimum requirements.

3. See .2 above. Also I believe once V3 software is released there will be more stats to go by to allow potential contributors to make a better, more informed judgement on whether to jump in or not.

4. That was the case from Test Group A up to Test Group C including V2, we should see what the minimum requirements are for V3 once they are clear and defined and publicly available. I'm also looking forward to find out more.

5. They made it clear there will be different waves of invites for people who registers for the whitelist and fill in the survey, that will determine who gets invited first and who later based on their setup and performance as well as previous (V2) performance if people provides their node ids. There will be high end node operators and lower end ones.

6. I do think there will be different tiers over time, I didn't mean they will be dropping slower nodes, I meant they will drop lower performing nodes. So uptime will probably be one of the main factors influencing "reputation", together with bandwidth. If you fill in their survey you will see all the questions they ask about your nodes and the requirements. Based on that you will end in the first wave of invites or a following one.

7. Yes I agree, however data centers from major cloud players are sometimes miles if not thousand of miles away from end users, sometimes in a different country altogether, so even if you use SSDs in a data center maybe the distance from the actual data may not make it as fast as if it were in close proximity. In Storj's case, so long as there are plenty storage node operators and the network is widely distributed, you may have better data speeds because you may be getting the files from your neighbour or somewhere local.

I have been supporting Storj since its inception as you can tell I'm a big fan. So I'm confident the team is in the right place, has the right people and partners to achieve their goals. It's just a question of being a little bit patient as early 2019 comes we will all know better.

In the meantime check out their latest roadmap to keep an eye on what's next and when: https://storjlabs.aha.io/published/01ee405b4bd8d14208c5256d70d73a38

If you want to have more precise answers than mine I recommend joining their official community at https://community.storj.io where plenty of support agents and team members will be happy to help.

We are all on the same boat, with V2 (deprecated network) there were lots of low performing nodes (in the tens of thousands) with many just spinning up new nodes just to get a basic payout. So rewards were distributed to many nodes instead of fewer but better performing.

I wasn't looking to earn a profit by sharing storage as a farmer I wanted to contribute to the network with the hope that things will improve overtime.
The team also never encouraged anyone to spend money to buy resources to share on the network but recommended to use existing and/or spare hardware.

In terms of pricing Storj is already cheaper for end users according to the website and they mentioned in the blogpost above that they will have to keep their pricing competitive to make it a viable alternative to main object storage providers. The focus is on enterprise customers and developers rather than end users but any third party can build tools and alternative cloud storage solutions for end users. They have partnered with several open source platforms that are already testing the V3 network. Another thing that is very important to mention is that Storj's biggest seller is providing decentralized, client-side encrypted storage where data owners can trust that only they can access their files and no one else.

However, when V3 is released for farmers there will be "reputation" introduced and Storj will only allow farmers with good reputation. Reputation will be affected by the new rules for being a farmer and minimum requirements so that should drastically improve payouts for good performers and drop off the network low performing nodes. This will first make the network more resilient also make fewer people able to earn rewards for contributing to the network.

So I strongly doubt that regular folks will be able to make a living with Storj in the future unless they have resilient nodes, good bandwidth and upload/download speeds and I think it's for the best, I rather have a solid alternative to mainstream providers that allows for total privacy and security as well as high resiliance and performance.

Version 2 is deprecated, have to wait for V3 release early next year.

I wish I could come, hope you guys have a good one!

Keep up the good work!

The main risk is they could keep a copy of the private key once the paper wallet is generated.
Better be safe than sorry in my opinion...

Your best bet for answers to your questions is to join the official community group at https://community.storj.io.

Plenty of team members on there.

One thing that will change, as per the latest town hall video, is that nodes with higher reputation will have more chance to host data from the network while unreliable nodes will not.
Hence why they have waitlist, so as long you have joined you will get access, however being able to store network data and earn rewards out of it will depend on how your node/s perform.
They are introducing reputation and based on that some nodes will earn rewards and some others will not be able to participate. I personally think this is for the best if we want Storj to be a success.

I know as much as anyone else by following Storj updates and as AngryWhiteWolf said most likely end of year, potentially early 2019.
It is a big task the the team is trying to achieve with almost a complete overhaul of the network so some delay should be expected as with any company developing software.
If you want to get early access as soon as V3 is released to the public do register for the waitlist at https://storj.io/#waitlist

There's no tactics, the current network is not going to grow in storage used as development is focused on the new version 3 as the Storj team mentioned in the video I shared a few posts above.
So you won't get much rewards until the new version is released to the public. It's currently being tested by the new open source partners so hopefully it won't be too long until we can all get our hands on it.

Not at the moment, the current network is not being developed any further. Once version 3 is released to the public more features will be added and it will be easier to track payouts.

Keep up the good work team, I see a lot of content being published on your blog lately.

Looking forward to see the first customer launching on Rocket! 

ETA is by end of year according to what they said on rocket chat and telegram.

Here's a blogpost and video with more details on what's to come:

https://blog.storj.io/post/174919908598/a-look-at-storj-labs-decentralized-cloud-storage

https://youtu.be/GFFyxHfAIQA