People should stop using Imgur. 99% of the time when I click an Imgur link, I get a 403 Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later. I highly doubt that they are, and they are just blocking VPNs.
If you go with a cheap enough colo provider, you can get it down to like $200/mo (depending on electricity prices and such where you are) with an initial cost of like $800 for some used server hardware.