are the rewards only paid out based on the number of contributions that are verified?

Yes exactly. That's why you can be removed if you are a bad moderator and never be able to join the moderators again. This will be a natural selection process. Also if I see 50 reputation is too low, this will be increased.

Maybe there should be a way for reviewers to mark an item as "reviewed" but not verified so they can get credit for work preventing posts that don't follow the rules.

While you can't put a like on the post until the post is verified, you can put it on the comments. So the more the moderator is helpful the more likes he will get on his comments.

Also it would help me to see some more examples of accepted and not-accepted submissions. I was taking a look through some of them and I wasn't sure which way to go or how much of a stickler for the rules I should be.

Right! I will do this.

For example on this one: https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@ivysrono/update-zh-cn-for-busy I cited that it didn't follow the "Contributions MUST BE Informative and Narrative" rule. Let me know if you agree with that or not.

You did a GREAT job

Either way this is a great change, and great to have a moderation system. Can't believe how fast you're making updates, seems like there is something new every day!

Did not stop working for 3 days in a row now :D