FWIW I got more followers and engagement from this tweet than all the zapvertising / satograms I'd ever done before. Your idea of giving substantive money doesn't work as well because it gives people pure money with no strings attached instead of credit on my platform. I'd rather give them credit since it "dog foods" my app and I only lose it if they actually redeem the credit, unlike zapvertisements. Additionally, I have a bunch of free credits from cloud platform anyways to burn through so again giving away credit is the better option in this use case.

There are many more ideas I plan to employ using zaps and such, but just wanted to give you some real feedback on how it works in practice.