Are there any success stories hobbyist becoming node operators?

I am very interested in chainlink, think it’s one of the coolest cryptos out there. However finding people who have had success getting directly on network as an official node operator seems to be worse odds than winning the lottery. I mean sure, spinning up a node and getting on a testnet can be done in an afternoon and is pretty cool, but payouts seem to be non existent. Dash seems to be more straightforward, xmr seems to be more honest. And why does link make it so hard to participate and get rewarded beyond staking? Is this my own ignorance or how it works? I would rather spend time working towards making money off of the other depins or something like akash. If 90 official node operators exist and 400 million flows through the network, that’s more of a monopoly. Some banks have more partners than 90 distinct businesses..