I'm going to assume you have a Windows computer that you can leave on 24/7.
Go get Virtual Box (an open-source VM application) https://www.virtualbox.org/ and download a .iso from a distribution of your choice. (Maybe even try a few different distributions.)
Install Linux on the VM. Whenever you set up a service, open up a port for it on your router. Use Dyndns https://account.dyn.com/ or No-ip https://www.noip.com/ to set up a domain.
The advantages of the above approaches is that they require little (or no) money to start, and allow you to try a lot of different things. The nice things about VMs is that you can make a few of them, and back them up before you make changes, so it's easy to make mistakes and go back.
If / when you're ready to spend some money, you can either move to a physical computer or a VM hosted somewhere. Just hold off on doing this until after you've made a few mistakes.
I'm going to assume you have a Windows computer that you can leave on 24/7.
Go get Virtual Box (an open-source VM application) https://www.virtualbox.org/ and download a .iso from a distribution of your choice. (Maybe even try a few different distributions.)
Install Linux on the VM. Whenever you set up a service, open up a port for it on your router. Use Dyndns https://account.dyn.com/ or No-ip https://www.noip.com/ to set up a domain.
The advantages of the above approaches is that they require little (or no) money to start, and allow you to try a lot of different things. The nice things about VMs is that you can make a few of them, and back them up before you make changes, so it's easy to make mistakes and go back.
If / when you're ready to spend some money, you can either move to a physical computer or a VM hosted somewhere. Just hold off on doing this until after you've made a few mistakes.