It's just awesome you're doing all this research and compiling to help build a better sustainable Steem ecosystem Mark. Good for you! I have been trying to get comfortable using other front end then steemit but have a ways to go in this department. I've never thought of it from a monetary perspective and in all honesty if paying a percentage of my rewards will help create a more stable reliable decentalised blickchain I am all for it. But, the UI needs to be reliable and usable. Today I am using Busy but when I want to edit my comment, it's complicated to do I have to scroll around to find it. Most other times when I have used esteem (and all others too for example) to make posts if I click out or something distracts me while creating the post I loose all my work! I could create my post in another program and copy it over. Yes. That is possible. I often use steemit to get links for images to add to posts (edit) because I can't add pics easily to some of the UI's (actifit) for example. It's also worth noting that I use my mobile device to do 99% of the steeming that I do. Steemit even if it is not flashy is always reliable so I tend to use it the most. But, would be happy to pay a percentage of post rewards to keep it alive. Until a better UI is running.
On another note I just learned through Steemitboard that you're having Christmas very soon in the Netherlands! That's cool! I had no idea that different countries celebrated on different days...other than Ukrainian Christmas which is often in January. Hope you are enjoying the preparations! 🎁🎄☃️❄