So, a week of staking my 1100 ION got me precisely....ZERO return.  It turns out staking is slightly more complex than I had thought. I imagined it as some sort of linear thing.... you have 1000 ION, you will earn (on average) x ION daily...but nope, it turns out there's a bit of an algorithm. You get a 'weight' for the number of coins you own (up to a certain amount, say 6000 ION), then a weight for the length of time you've staked your coins & this determines if you get a payout (grossly simplified I'm sure). What it means in practice is that if you only stake a small amount of ION, you'll NEVER receive a payout. The solution? Pool together with others.

I choose to use POSwallet for this pooled staking & I was very excited when my first payout came through!
https://poswallet.com/

Here's a screen shot of how my staking has been progressing so far:
https://i.imgsafe.org/6f6ea74032.png

I'm very pleased with my little experiment so far & staking on POSwallet was pretty painless (even for a noob like me). 

Plans for the future? No big plans, but this has certainly given me the confidence to stake other coins. If ION soars in value for some reason, then I'd probably 'take some money off the table' and convert them to bitcoin as my long term store of value. If not, then I'll keep staking as long as it's profitable.