Are u mining directly?

[byt411]

Have purchased/sold ~35GH worth of cloud mining on ghash.io over the past several months and aside from the occassional pool-related issue(s) never had any problems.  

*Did I earn any real profit?  Nope, matter of fact I ended up losing money but it was a valuable learning experience

Cloud mining will almost never earn you a profit.

Cex has put a stop to this, but you used to be able to buy GH/s then place an order to sell right away, and you would earn whatever it mined until it sold (they now charge a trading fee)

Haha, looks like that I'm the exception, since I bought some FHM, and if I sell them now, I actually do profit.

You can still trade GH/s for a profit, it is just that the market needs to move in your favor a little bit before doing so

No, you cannot, since the price on cex doesn't change much, and there are now trading fees.

[gondel]

Have purchased/sold ~35GH worth of cloud mining on ghash.io over the past several months and aside from the occassional pool-related issue(s) never had any problems.  

*Did I earn any real profit?  Nope, matter of fact I ended up losing money but it was a valuable learning experience

Cloud mining will almost never earn you a profit.

Cex has put a stop to this, but you used to be able to buy GH/s then place an order to sell right away, and you would earn whatever it mined until it sold (they now charge a trading fee)

Haha, looks like that I'm the exception, since I bought some FHM, and if I sell them now, I actually do profit.

You can still trade GH/s for a profit, it is just that the market needs to move in your favor a little bit before doing so

No, you cannot, since the price on cex doesn't change much, and there are now trading fees.

So basically what you are saying is that cloud mining is not profitable at all 
Should i invest a little just to try how it works or is a waste of time? Investing in a graphic card is not a little investment ( like 1000$ for new card)..i am thinking of something else cheaper of course

[byt411]

Have purchased/sold ~35GH worth of cloud mining on ghash.io over the past several months and aside from the occassional pool-related issue(s) never had any problems.  

*Did I earn any real profit?  Nope, matter of fact I ended up losing money but it was a valuable learning experience

Cloud mining will almost never earn you a profit.

Cex has put a stop to this, but you used to be able to buy GH/s then place an order to sell right away, and you would earn whatever it mined until it sold (they now charge a trading fee)

Haha, looks like that I'm the exception, since I bought some FHM, and if I sell them now, I actually do profit.

You can still trade GH/s for a profit, it is just that the market needs to move in your favor a little bit before doing so

No, you cannot, since the price on cex doesn't change much, and there are now trading fees.

So basically what you are saying is that cloud mining is not profitable at all 
Should i invest a little just to try how it works or is a waste of time? Investing in a graphic card is not a little investment ( like 1000$ for new card)..i am thinking of something else cheaper of course

Cards certainly don't cost $1000, for example, a decent R9 270 is less than $150.
You could buy some cheap ASICs, such as The Fury from GAWMiners.
Or you could try PBMining, you eventually will profit

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Have purchased/sold ~35GH worth of cloud mining on ghash.io over the past several months and aside from the occassional pool-related issue(s) never had any problems.  

*Did I earn any real profit?  Nope, matter of fact I ended up losing money but it was a valuable learning experience

Cloud mining will almost never earn you a profit.

Cex has put a stop to this, but you used to be able to buy GH/s then place an order to sell right away, and you would earn whatever it mined until it sold (they now charge a trading fee)

Haha, looks like that I'm the exception, since I bought some FHM, and if I sell them now, I actually do profit.

You can still trade GH/s for a profit, it is just that the market needs to move in your favor a little bit before doing so

No, you cannot, since the price on cex doesn't change much, and there are now trading fees.

It would need to change by .4% in your favor in order to profit off of price alone. You would also keep any mining rewards that the GH/s earned while you held the GHs

[byt411]

Have purchased/sold ~35GH worth of cloud mining on ghash.io over the past several months and aside from the occassional pool-related issue(s) never had any problems.  

*Did I earn any real profit?  Nope, matter of fact I ended up losing money but it was a valuable learning experience

Cloud mining will almost never earn you a profit.

Cex has put a stop to this, but you used to be able to buy GH/s then place an order to sell right away, and you would earn whatever it mined until it sold (they now charge a trading fee)

Haha, looks like that I'm the exception, since I bought some FHM, and if I sell them now, I actually do profit.

You can still trade GH/s for a profit, it is just that the market needs to move in your favor a little bit before doing so

No, you cannot, since the price on cex doesn't change much, and there are now trading fees.

It would need to change by .4% in your favor in order to profit off of price alone. You would also keep any mining rewards that the GH/s earned while you held the GHs

Actually, if you try and profit with like 5 GH/s, you would have earned next to nothing from mining, and even if you profit from trading it's a few satoshis.
Unless you have like 10BTC to try and earn more through trading, don't even try.

[GAML]

You may find this coindesk article helps http://www.coindesk.com/information/cloud-mining-bitcoin-guide/

In addition to work out what you will really earn from mining without using a mining calculator (most of which are based on solo mining and complete nonsense in regards what you will get) use the following formula.

Rough expected reward (per day) = (your hash rate / network hash rate)*(144*25)*(1-%pool fee)

Ex: you have 500TH/s. Network has 20000TH/s. 5% pool fee.
(500/20000)*(144*25)*(1-.05)
(.025)*(3600)*(.95)

Expected return: 85.5BTC/day

Adjust for coin of your choice. You'd get a better immediate estimate by working with difficulty instead of network hashrate, but - eh. 

This answer was provided by someone far cleverer than me via https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=447051.0

I have used this formula on different alt coins that I have mined and it is pretty darn accurate.  Not 100% but gives a good estimate far more accurate than mining calculators that I used in the past.


Even thought I mine I also use faucets such as http://freebitco.in/?r=527569 and http://freedoge.co.in/?r=8875  I use these to get more satoshi to invest into coins; then make profits by speculating on coins that I think will go up in value.

Hope that helps and happy mining.