Even if it's not, you won't make money. Cloud mining, by its nature, isn't profitable. Run it through a calculator for proof. If it were, they wouldn't be doing it -- it's literally like giving away free money, which would be the opposite of what any for-profit business is designed for.
If you mine the right contact you can make profit. Also it is like taking a loan. You use what the customer Gabe you to buy more hash power sharing the profits. I prefer to just rent hash power out and do it myself for a few hours. That's altcoins though.
Bitcoin I don't bother mining strait for the reasons you gave.
Do the math. The only cloud mining sites that have ever been profitable are those that let you resell your contracts to other people that don't know what they're doing so you can take advantage of them and suck them in as well. No other contract has ever been profitable. Math guarantees this, and math doesn't lie.
Cloud mining is not really profitable and anytime what altcoin you are mining if the value of its altcoin it can reduce your profit instead of gaining profit..
Much better to buy your own rig like in mining ethereum you can earn more profit if you buy or build your own rig more expenses if you buy ready made mining rig but if you build your own you can reduce and make a good mining rig with your own..
And you can gain more profit.
This is my plan from beginning i still holding small amount of btc to start building or buy mining its more profitable than you are just investing in cloud mining site.. selling your own contract is the other strategy just to get the benefits of holding the control for few weeks or days when the price of altcoin you are mining before is high if the altcoin is starting to crash or the value is down they are selling the contract just to gain back their investment..