That's kinda how I started relay.nostriches.org, by whitelisting people I follow and giving away memberships. The paid fee is low but keeps much of the spam off it as was the intention. Not world-class in performance like Wine, but I keep the lights on.
Discussion
I could take some of the money that I'll save cutting back on drinking and put it into renting a good server. I've noticed it's hard to pull up old notes sometimes. This would hopefully be more responsive when you're trying to find old notes later on down the road.