Profit depends on your costs. If you have monthly costs of $5 for renting a VPS where your NEM node is running, then you could be profitable by harvesting with 500k of NEM. But it also depends on your importance. Someone with a smaller amount of XEM and a high importance can be as successfully as someone with a higher amount of XEM and a lower importance.
How would someone with less XEM get higher or as high importance than someone with more XEM? What else counts? NUmber of transactions?
yes thats pretty much it.
More transactions increases your importance score

This way it encourages people to use the network rather than just sit on coins.