...a few hundred
I really wanted steemit to succeed after I understood what it was. Before I even had finished account creation, I knew that I wanted to contribute to the community in some substantive way but I didn't really know how it was I would do that.
I learned that the real backbone of the community, the foundation on which this all rests were the witnesses hosting the blockchain. So I set forth to learn how to become a witness.
I don't have a big server room with nice high end machines but I do have a decently nice (ex)gaming machine dedicating a few threads to a steem node, and have even found several POWs. For the doubters, my steemd page now testifies that I am a witness (screenshot below.)
...and any doubts I had were erased once I started getting paid for my honest efforts at contributing quality blog posts and comments
...and I've already handed out a few since they arrived just yesterday.