Thanks for letting me know that SteemWorld shows if a benefactor reward has been taken. I've used them for tracking my voting power but never really explored the other features. It's just to bad that you can't find out before these sites have taken part of your money.
Seems Zappl takes a 15% cut.
Reading and learning in order to understand it better is key to everything.
Good luck! Keep it up and explore the tools at your disposal :)