Your personal researches cost much more than the experience of "other guys". Trust no one and always get into everything by yourself. The best teacher here is time as far as it worked for me.
Exactly, we must do our research not only by reading, but also by doing. And it needs long time, even for me not just on a single year. For example, to set up miner is not too difficult as I thought before, but I need more time to test what the pool, configuration, electricity consumed, coin mined research and other.