I didn't get an upvote on my entry at all.
To me, i believe that i did well but in every contest there must be a winner and a looser and its just normal but just like you said, upvote encourages people to partake an put more effort in subsequent ones but even if its cents, i didn't get that encouragement upvote on my own entry as it wasn't easy to have written a 1000+ words for a contest.
Meanwhile, big congratulations to the winners.