I finally did it: I have set up my own SmartNode and will now earn regular payouts of SmartCash. That was surprisingly easy and fast. Here is a rough breakdown of the process.
Get 10,000 SmartCash For Your SmartNode
The 10K SmartCash are considered a collateral and required for you to set up a SmartNode in the first place. You still own them and you can always transfer them out of your wallet. Whenever you have less than 10k SmartCash in your wallet the SmartNode will not produce anymore.
So, in order to get yourself a SmartNode you need to own 10,000 SmartCash first. You can earn them with posts on Steemit and by contributing to the SmartHive in form of contests. Also, in form of official proposals which can be voted for by the SmartCash holders. If accepted you will be paid the requested USD amount in SmartCash. Everyone can do that as the SmartHive is decentralized.
Get Yourself a Cloud Server
As suggested by several tutorials I have read the Vultr service is cheap and good. For just $5 USD a month you can get a sufficient Ubuntu server with 25GB SSD, 1 CPU, 1GB Memory and 1000GB Bandwidth. After signup you can immediately get started to install the SmartNode on it. More infos in the videos below.
I am using their referral link and I have not really looked for competitors. Please keep that in mind as there might be better services out there. But I think $5 is a bargain compared to the powerful servers you need for a Steem witness and the Vultr service has worked flawlessly for me.
Installing the SmartNode
For the installation instructions please follow 
Little tip: Hannah mentions the smartcash.conf file at the beginning. Check it right away and if it does not exist create it yourself writing only txindex=1 in it and save it in your SmartCash app data folder. Your wallet will now sync all blocks again after restart. To speed up bringing the blocks to the status quo you can donwload the txindexstrap.zip. I've got the link from Blockchain Library on the SmartCash discord server. It worked great for me.
Windows 10 Tutorial
MaxOS Tutorial
Conclusion
The SmartRewards can be paired with SmartNode payouts in one single wallet. That makes it double interesting to run a node yourself and earn passive income. The bigger the network grows the smaller your payouts will become. However, that will hopefully also reflect in a higher price. Currently SmartCash is worth just below $0.10 cents but the decentralized SmartHive and organic growth of the coin are very promising. I hope to see SmartCash becoming a really nice passive income in the future.