If you are planning to have small mining farm, don't do it. I've read some rumors about the small miners that if they will not expand their operation they are going to forced quit not by their miner competitors but the expenses they will generate lesser than what they are going to get since the halving will purposely cut the supply into half. Although they can still mine other coins at low rewards.
You are right, mining is not what one will venture into with small budget due to many reason which the most important one is the huge processing power requirements to run mining activities, gone are the days when even a common computer user with light processing powers can mine cryptos on such low end computers, a simple web search of mining farms will show how high end systems and computer processors are being use to have a profitable mining and secondly, like you said, if you are not well enforced with huge capital to cave a perfect place for yourself in the market, the bigger fishes will just eat up your potential profit generation margin
