If @smooth's vote had been your only vote, it wouldn't have netted you more than a few bucks. The reason that vote made so much difference is because it snowballed with the many other smaller but no less real upvotes from your other followers. If money isn't your main driver, you should give more weight to number of upvotes and quality and quantity of relevant comments over payout as payout is only indirectly correlated to actual popularity.