Making money from distributed computing - anyone do this?

I've been wanting to make some extra cash lately but I already work a 40 hour a week job, and the only weekend jobs I could get in my area are cruddy burger-flipping ones. I've been reading about working from home, and stumbled upon distributed computing.

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Unfortunately that article is 2 years old, and only the links to Gomez PEER and the MQL 5 Cloud Network still work. Are there any others that you know of? Has anyone else here profited from selling their processor time? What service did you use?

I'm entertaining the idea of building a cheap rig just for doing this and seeing how it goes. I would obviously want a processor with the most flops for the least amount of electricity, so it wouldn't cost more to keep it on than what I would make me from selling processor time. Maybe if it turned out to be profitable, I could build several...

If anyone has experience with this, I would love to hear more about it.

Generally its not worth it, the bang needed to make a buck is normally more than a buck to get.

The power costs are quite often the biggest thing to worry about after the kit itself, if you have a way of generating free power 24x7 then you're on the right tracks but also consider that things like bitcoins have gone down a lot in value and the pro miners now have very specialist rigs to do their work..yep you might make a few cents a day with some low level kit but if it costs you 20c to make 10c then its not worth it.

Probably if you seriously joined together loads of low powered kit like the raspberry pi into a cluster as the most basic one is like 5 bucks and uses virtually no power but has a reasonable cpu you could build a beowulf cluster but it would take time and effort and a reasonable slab of cash before you'd see any return.

Its sounds like it expensive to set up and would be a while before you get any returns, if any at all, Have you thought of prostitution? I hear you can make a couple of hundred and hour easy money. Possibly more if you cry, they like that and are always willing to pay a bit more for it....

a reply to: peskyhumans

The thread in my signature might help if you are looking to pick up extra cash, working when you want, for however long (or short) you want, and everything is legit. There are enough ideas presented that you should be able to find one or two that work for you.

Good luck, I've been in your shoes.

I just moved into a new house were I actually have to pay for my own electricity. This thread gave me heart palpitations! As others have said, Unless your running very specific hardware for the task at hand, You will chew up way more electricity than you earn in money. Plus, You should dedicate that CPU/GPU to something like Folding Home and similar programs instead, You might not make anything from it but helping fold proteins and create new medicines is always a good thing.

a reply to: Maxatoria

Thanks for suggesting raspberry pi. I think I will get one and see if I can run a distributed computing service on it. Much, much more cost effective than building a PC.

Most major tech firms ? What in the world do you think the mystical "cloud " is ? Distributed Computing. Nothing magical or high-tech at all . In fact lets simplify that name a bit- High Performance Cluster. Period. Been around for about 30 years.
Just putting lipstick on a pig. Now its a pig with lipstick....