I agree with your assessment about paying for 0.0 space completely. I'm not even overly excited about paying for WH space, which can be bought on the forums also. The only thing I can say to this is: everyone get to looking for a WH for us! If you can't pilot a cov ops then scan the classified forums for a good deal and bring it back to us here. If you can pilot cov ops spend some time every day looking around and see what you can find. A class3 is still what we're looking for, and one with a static 0.0 would probably be best (static means it always has an entrance from somewhere in 0.0, but it can also spawn entrances to lowsec and hisec).

I'd personally like to get into a c4 or c5 once everyone gets comfortable, but I bow to Meeo's experience and will stick with starting in a c3.