so what kind of coinage do you need to properly stake (yes i've read up but there are some contradiction, eg my client says 1000, but a tutoral says 10000 etc etc etc)?
any advantage in more coinage?
prior to staking any advantage or need in keeping the client running?
it is 10000, the client has a typo
more coinage is related to your importance on the network, and therefore increases your odds of harvesting a block, but not directly, check out the white paper for more detail
Harvesting involves block creation, so something needs to be running. It can be your local computer running a node, your own remote node on a vps, or on a public node.
Soon, (i hope) there will be a system of rewards for those running their own nodes. So that will be another way of profiting in addition to harvesting