Mining on your own basically you get all the profit. Only 2-3% is given to the mining pool and other people. Depending on the price of BTC your power can cost 5-15% of your profits.
So that 2% margin the mining power. They onsell that 2% margin to suckers. They will likely allow you to make 2% margin if you are lucky. That is if the price doesn't drop and stays the say. The only way you can make money from mining contracts is if the price of the coin you are mining goes up, so you may as well have bought the coin outright with your money in the firse place because you would not be locked into any fixed contracts or referal schemes or monthly fees.
Just buy the coin and you are free to do with it whatever you want when you want. They are a ponzi scheme at best. Half the time you spend trying to sucker in other people just to make ends meet.
2 years is crazy in mining. 1 year is crazy. I plan to sell up all my cards every 6 months and buy the latest ones, only as long as mining is still worth it. In 3-6 months things might have changed and GPU mining is worthless. As long as you have a plan in place for every 3-6 months you are pretty well protected.
You can sell all your gear every six months and not really lose too much on the price.
There is legitimate uses for mining contracts such as a company that may use the hashing power for something other than mining or they need to mine something specific for a short period of time and don't then won't need the hardware afterwards.
So yer .. contracts are generally scams or very risky returns. If you made money it's because the coin went up and you got lucky. Could have made more putting your investment in the coin immediatly.
Thanks for the reply, everyday is a school day when it comes to crypto. I’ll be sure to avoid mining contracts.