WOW! This community never ceases to amaze me!
Thanks, @meno for starting this initiative and for all the people who followed your lead and made similar posts. All the rewards collected go back to the community.
One thing some people may not realize is the @openmic trail that people follow does not upvote the posts I make for Open Mic which is where the bulk of rewards come from to pay out the winners. It only auto-votes the people who enter.
I also don't upvote my own posts. So, even if they are following the Open Mic trail they could also upvote the main contest posts I make from my account and that would go a long way to supporting the community.
It is one of the rules for entering but not everyone does it. I guess they figure if they are following the trail in auto-votes those posts but it does not. I purposely excluded those posts so no one thinks I'm trying to game the system.
My portion of the rewards (100 Steem/week) comes from those posts and it sometimes falls short. However, I think if everyone who enters upvoted those posts we should be self-sustaining by now.
Thanks again for all you do to make Open Mic work so smoothly.