Wait... What?..You only made how much STEEM?

Personally I am in a unique place. I just happen to own a small hosting company and I have spare hi-end servers that I am no longer using because I have condensed my hosting footprint by using virtualization software. I also pay for a specific set amount of power and bandwidth each month. That price does not vary as long as I don't go over my peak points. So I can re-purpose old servers for Witness and Seed nodes and my hosting fees are not going to change.

I made this post because my witness mentor, @yehey posted something in the witness chat on Discord that got me thinking about the question, Can I Really Afford To Be A Witness for STEEMit?"*

@yehey suggested the following;

@Yehey [ Witness ] - 01/23/2018
For your information before you buy your first witness server.
Some questions to ask yourself first because this involve losing $$$ every month.
Can you afford to lose $$$ every month being a new witness?
Can you get more votes, especially Whales to support your Witness Campaign?
Can you manage your own witness server?
I guess those three are the obvious reasons.
You need to be in Top 50 so you can pay for your witness servers.
Of course you can setup your witness server, see the pinned post for step-by-step procedures. And if you have any questions, please post to #witness thread
Here's the link of witnesses https://steemian.info/witnesses
I hope that will help your decision.

Right now neither @yehey nor myself are making any money when you consider the cost of hosting and the time invested. Good thing for me it's not costing me any money either.
As you can see below both of us are outside the top 80 witnesses in Steemit. Lots of room to grow.

If you are renting a VPS from @Privex Hosting offered by @Someguy123 (recommended hosting), then you are going to just about break even as long as $STEEM remains around $2.50 to $3.00, as far as a finacial investment goes.

You also must invest yourself

You also need to factor in the time and knowledge or at least the time to gain the knowledge it is going to take to make sure your node stays up to date with security patches like the one we had released last week, and the changes that will come with upcoming hard forks as they are released.

It is a lot of work even for those of us that have a good grasp of what we are doing. For a novice hacker it is going to be a huge learning curve even with wonderful witness and Seed guides like the ones @yehey has provided.

But that is not all

As a witness you are expected to also be in some fashion a contributor to the community. What do you bring to the table as a witness? Are you a political advocate ready to sit in on all the STEEMit Forums hosted by @Jesta and @Aggroed and make a valid contribution to the dialogue? Or do you have talents that are going to help evolve the application or bring new applications to the community.

@Arcange gives us STEEMSQL, a tool that provides a SQL interface to the active STEEM Blockchain. This commitment requires a STEEM RPC node. That is a pretty hefty investment.

Only recently did @Arcange start asking for a subscription to the steemSQL service. Fair enough if you knew the cost to provide a resource intensive service like this.

Other witnesses's have provided projects like the STEEMd site brought to you by @Roadscape, or the steemian.info site (screen cap seen above) provided by @Drakos, This is an invaluable tool for witnesses. Another one that I find myself visiting an awful lot is the Potential Rewards site created by @Dragosroua.

@yabapmatt gives us the STEEM Bot Tacker. If you use voting bots this tool cannot be one that is overlooked.

As well you have front end developers like the chrome and Firefox plugin developed by @Armandocat

Another great tool is Steem World by @Steemchiller. This tool is one of the best compilations of STEEM Blockchain data I have seen yet. Another useful tool called Vessel built by @Jesta. Vessel is a Steem Wallet in Desktop mode. It has other uses also like moving STEEM to and from https://bittrex.com exchange and openledger.

Another great witness is @JerryBanfield. Jerry is more like the STEEMit.com Evangelist. Jerry might remind you of an exuberant Joel Olsten preaching the wonders of STEEMit all around the world from his @Dtube pulpit. Jerry has taken a major portion of what he has earned on STEEMit and bought ads on Fascistbook and youtube to help spread the word about STEEMit.com.

Jerry is a giver. He so appreciates what STEEMit has given to him he cannot help himself but to give back. He even developed a @budgets plan for Witness's that are that are devoted to STEEMit but tragically failing to be able to afford to keep a witness server racked and running.

Jerry has opted to award STEEM Witnesses below an active rank of 80 with a 100 STEEM per month allowance. For most that still wont be enough to keep your VPS bill current but it is who @JerryBanfield is. If you have not been introduced to Jerry yet make sure you take the time to review some of his videos. He is an inspiration to many of us and how a lot of us found out about STEEMit.com

So be sure to ask yourself 1st, what can you bring to STEEM?

As you peruse your quest to run a witness server keep in mind STEEMit is not a cash cow. Particularly in the beginning its more like a money pit. If you don't bring your heart and your resolve along with a shit tonne of hours and cash you can devote to the community, your quest is not going to turn into vest.

Just my two STEEMS Worth.
Vote LibertyRanger as your Witness or Set Proxy.
Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses URL address then scroll down to Vote.

Or you may simply follow this link and click the Continue button to confirm your vote.
https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=libertyranger&approve=1
Please follow me @LibertyRanger, Vote Up and Resteem
Thank you,
@LibertyRanger

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