At the time, the block reward had just halved for the first time from 50 to 25 a few months earlier, plus the difficulty adjustment was skyrocketing. The combination made these rigs unprofitable pretty much as soon as you received them. Depending on the pool and how much hash rate you contributed to the pool, it was probably less than one BTC per month for a rig like the Butterfly Labs Jalapeno.

It was exciting and frustrating...