These are the seven levers that move an operator's monthly number, ordered by real impact. Do the first three and you're ahead of most of the pool.
1. Uptime is 80% of the game
The gateway rotates across online nodes. Every hour offline is an hour of zero earnings, and chronic flapping marks your node unreliable. One node at 99% uptime beats three nodes at 60%.
- PC nodes: enable the systemd service autostart.
- Phone nodes: keep it on the charger, WiFi-only, battery optimization off for SnowGain.
2. Fix your line before adding hardware
Run a week of 24/7 on your current setup and look at GB/day. If it plateaus, the bottleneck is your line, not your node count.
- Wire over Ethernet when you can.
- If latency to the gateway is consistently >100 ms, talk to your ISP or switch — see the ISP benchmark.
3. Cover both IP types
Mobile IPs (phone nodes) and residential/fibre IPs (PC nodes) serve different client demand. One of each earns more than two of the same — the pool fills both buckets from you.
4. Scale across locations, not copies
Two nodes on the same line share one public IP and split its capacity. A second node at a different location (parents' house, a friend's flat, a cheap VPS) adds real supply. Multi-node operators with nodes spread across ISPs and cities earn the most per unit of effort.
5. Set honest caps
Overselling your line — letting the tunnel use more than your upload can sustain — creates choppy sessions that earn less per GB. Set the app caps at ~80% of your measured stable upload. Stable beats peaky, always.
6. Watch your dashboard weekly
Ten minutes a week catches problems early:
- A node with traffic but low GB → line quality issue.
- A node with zero traffic → tunnel or token issue.
- GB trending down across all nodes → pool-wide or local ISP issue.
7. Keep hardware boring
The best node hardware is the stuff you forget about:
- Old laptop or mini PC for fibre nodes.
- A spare phone you already own for mobile nodes.
- No exotic cooling, no overclocking, no babysitting.
Boring hardware with 99% uptime out-earns exciting hardware at 70%.
The one-line summary
Stable line, honest caps, both IP types, spread locations — then leave it alone and let the network work.
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