There’s quite a bit of unknown for BP candidates. You could invest in hardware AND voter outreach, and not make it into even the standby pool, and thus make no money at all.

However, putting the needs of the chain first, we have to allow the voting to proceed as it proceeds, and trust to rehearsals and practice to give us (where “us” = the community) a cohort of competent BPs who can run the chain smoothly even during the initial churn.

From what I’ve seen, many of the mid-size BP candidates are also DApp creators and/or enthusiasts who are not solely dependent upon their BP income.

Also, the initial hardware configuration is not looking stupendously expensive.