Just done some checking and I'm following you but you're not following me :'(
That means you've not read anything of mine and so not voted on anything I've done. :'(
My life is a wilderness, will I ever progress from n00b? :'(
LOL
Fair play to you for supporting people. As you say, there's many ways to support people that doesn't necessarily involve money.
I limit my following list to only a few people whose content I want to get an alert for. I actively curate with the /created page which does not give any particular user an advantage. This gives me the best of both worlds. The more people I follow, the closer my feed gets to the /created tab and thus the less direct utility it provides me. It could provide social utility by making people think I am seeing their posts more often, but I don't want to present my following list in a less honest way like that.
I did in fact provide you with an upvote on your intro post. Sadly it was at an unfortunate timing for you in terms of the reward pool.
This does not surprise me. I'm the sort of guy that would pick the winning lottery numbers but for the previous week. LOL
It's all good by the way. :-)