Giving Back ~ Does it Help

This has been a pretty active week for contest that I was either hosting or judging. My main question is do contest help? I know the extra money anyone receives is always a plus but do contest help new users more than just giving ideas for basic posting on their page? I paid out 20.50 SBD this week and also tried to buy each contestant in the crayon contest a few dollars worth of votes from minnowbooster or smartsteem. My account is not big enough to upvote people a few dollars for their entries so this is the option that I have open to me to add extra value to each person that enters.

I was also the judge in @thedarkhorse's curation contest and bought 2 @steembasicincome prizes for two users in that contest. I also had the @eye4art account sitting idle as no-one had submitted an artist in the past week to be rewarded so I used that account to upvote the curation contest.

Did it help? Did anyone involved feel any extra love this week either from the votes received, comments made or the prizes won? Was this a better week for you on the platform? Do you have a better outlook this week about steemit?

I am just trying to gage what I do here and the impact it has for my fellow users. Are any of those users going to even read this? Please let me know your thoughts below.

Here are this weeks winners I mentioned above.