Excellent idea I remember that when I used the PS I used a service that charged me $ 1 per month, If I remember the name of the service I will let you know, I used it for VPN, and I configured everything under Linux. Really very good.
And the idea of putting a node is very good because presearch is a very interesting service. I support a lot your initiative to diversify and learn about this because it is very interesting.
Running a VPN over VPS is also extremely easy, and actually, really cool :) So yeah - that actually reminded me that I should set up a VPN myself using a VPS sometime soon! :)