Bruce Campbell talks about this with Army of Darkness, where he netted about $200,000 in 1990s dollars for his role - which was a good chunk of change. Except shopping and shooting the film tool four years, and he had to be available for dubbing and reshoots, so that ended up being $50,000/year; not povery house money, but not amazing either. He also had to wait for the movie to be released to see a portion of that, so while Raimi was fighting with the studio Campbell had to get a job as a night watchman so he could be available for AoD shoots and look for other jobs.
And that's for a guy who starred in a film most people have at least heard of.