One person in the torrenting connection has to have port forwarding in order for the connection to occur. When you aren't forwarding a port, you're downloading from / uploading to only people who are. If someone has something you want but neither of you are port forwarding, you won't be able to connect to them.
It's true that you have to be careful with your downloads. Whenever I join a new private trackers, I set up downloads to start getting bonus points, but I only set up automatic downloads for freeleech content. Once I have enough buffer, I'll open it up for all downloads.
This is after I fully fucked up my ratio on my first tracker. All my others ones look good.
I love the speeds of Usenet, but I feel like it's best to use it to tide you over while you work on getting into good private torrent trackers. Once you've got access to good private trackers, you don't have to pay anymore. (Except with storage, so I guess it depends on what you want and what capabilities you have.)
Podcast focused, please. We're in desperate need of one.