While giving badges for the sponsors, the makers absolutely also should get badges by the same script that already collected the npubs of all of them.

Should the zapped amount go into this badge, too? Recipients of more zaps clearly are more relevant makers than those with little or not zapping, right? Or does that only promote zapping of those that already get zaps, which would add an incentive to zap themselves or in circles?

Also there is client devs that make users of their clients their followers by default which certainly skews the zapping away from merit more towards smart marketing.