But I think if the entry fee was the same as last year, we would get some more participants.
This is exactly why I repeatedly mentioned that $10 was the optimal entry point and doubling it might not be beneficial since it could detract some participants from joining.
A lot of us are participating in various signature campaigns and we earn more than this amount in one week. Last time also, the fee was kept at BTC0.001 (this time it was actually reduced to BTC0.0004). Personally I thought that last time it was extremely beneficial for the participants. The entry fee constituted just around 20% of the pool, while the remaining 80% came from the sponsors. I haven't seen any other pool here in this forum, which was so lop-sided towards the participants. Given this, I actually expected a 2x increase in the participants for this year's pool.
I agree that these pools are quite generous, but money is money whether it is signature campaign earnings or anything else which is why $20 is way too high for some participants which is why I expected a drop in the number of participants.