As someone who helped manage a large POCO empire, recouping the cost of placing one of your own will take some time. They cost around 125 mil to put up last time I checked and that does not include war dev costs.
And yes, unless you have a large corp in an out of the way hi sec spot, your POCO may be a target. It would be better to negotiate a discount price for use or POCOs can be traded. You may be able to buy the POCO.
One place it can be profitable to put up a POCO is wormhole space. I passed through a C3 or C4 last night that was dead. Only an offline POS stick, no other structures. There were POCOs up but could have been replaced.
As I wormhole resident I can confirm that it is quite nice to do PI in your own wormhole. However the problem with living in a wormhole is wormhole eviction. It’s hard to live in one successfully without friends. It’s marginally easier now with citadels but a determined wormhole PvP corp will have no problems getting rid of your Astrahus or Raitaru.
Larger structures start to be a problem - especially in a small wormhole where they can’t bring capital ships in. But not everyone can afford to put up a Fortizar…
You also have to learn to think differently in a WH. Think of it as touring EVE on a cruise ship…
