Been using it 18 months. Have drawn out $20 so far. Be another 6 months till I get another $20 which is the minimum withdrawal. Network has been solid and nothing dodgy showing up in the firewall or on my DNS. It’s not amazing, but it’s free money

Current Self-hosted Setup

Hardware

Server 1
Trycoo / Peladn mini pc
Intel n97 CPU
Integrated GPU
32gb of 3200mt/s ddr4 (Upgraded from 16gb)
512nvme
2x 2tb ssd's (Raid1 + LVM)
Startech usb to sata cable
Atolla 6 port powered usb 3.0 splitter 
2x 8tb hdd's
2 bay usb 3.0 Fideco dock
Each 8tb HDD is split into 2 equal size partitions, making 4 x 4tb partitions
Each night, the 2tb SSD array backups to the alternating first partition of the HDD's .
Each 1st of the month, the 2tb SSD array backups to the alternating 2nd partition of the HDD's .

Server 2
Raspberry pi 4b
32gb SD card
4gb ram

Services

Server 1
Nginx web server / reverse proxy.  
Fail2ban.  
Crowdsec.  
Valutwarden
Bit warden reimplantation for storing credentials 
Forgejo
Remote federated git
Immich.   
Google Photos replacement.  
External libraries only.  
4 users.  
Radicale
Calender and contacts
Navidrome.  
Spotify replacement.  
2 users.  
Adguard home
1st instance
Provides Network wide DNS filtering and DHCP server
Unbound
Provides recursive DNS
Go-notes
Rich Text formatting, live, real time multi-user notes app
FMD
Find my device
Transmission
Torrent client
PIA VPN
Network Namespace script to isolate PIA & Transmission
Searxng
Meta search engine
StirlingPDF 
PDF editor
File browser
This is in maintenance mode only so I am planning to migrate to File Browser Quantum soon
Syncthing 
Syncs 3 android and 1 apple phone for immich
Custom rsync backup script
Darkstat
Real time Network statistics

Server 2
Fail2ban
Crowdsec
Honeygain
Generates a tiny passive income
I'm UK based and in the last 6 months it has produced £15
Adguard home
2nd instance
Provides Network wide DNS filtering and DHCP server
Unbound
Provides recursive DNS
Custom DDNS update script

I love podman quadlets, I didn’t do anything and it updated itself 😁

Unfortunately, you do what everybody else does. You use your reading, patience and time to research test and try various options over the course of weeks, months and years until you get experienced and knowledgeable about Linux and the ever changing options and configurations. There is no ultimate manual that tells you everything there is to know about Linux.

The only questions you really need to ask when picking a distro are which one aligns best with your effort, skill and preferences. To begin with prior to using any distro, those are very low and basic, so you want to start with a low effort quick and easy introduction to Linux. Start with a live distro to play around with. Then decide how much hand holding you need from there to choose which distro you actually want to commit to at the start. Then after weeks or months on that first distro, you will figure out what you like and dislike, which will guide your choices to move to the next distro. To begin with is all about learning and experimenting.

From my perspective, self hosting is a hobby, we run services we feel we need, but it’s also something we do for fun. As such some people enjoy thinking about and deploying the most secure server possible, regardless of actual threats. However, to directly answer your question, yes there isn’t really a lot that can be stolen from a self host residential server, maybe if you hack a valutwarden instance and acquire all the credit card details stored in it and all the id’s stored in it. But the main hack isnt stealing, but deploying a bot net of some sort.