Thanks, that really helped.
So if I vote using all my ARK - let's say it's 30,000 ARK coins - does that mean I give away 30,000 ARK so I won't have any ARK coins left? I'll have to wait for the small rewards to make my ARK coins back? Wouldn't that take many years?
You get to keep the ARK in your wallet. The vote transaction itself costs 1 ARK (everytime you unvote and vote for someone else it's 1 ARK, so don't change your mind too often). If you transfer some/all ARK out of the wallet, you decrease the amount of votes this wallet is generating.
Imagine it like getting interest to your balance on a bank account. If you take the money out, there's no more interest.