Oh yeah I didn't really focus on that aspect. Could be on a different section altogether about the window and its effects on trying to time auto votes on authors you already know are popular. Worth mentioning though.

In short, you can certainly do it, but there are two caveats:

1. You have to time it reliably to be before other voters and trade off with sacrificing curation the earlier you do it. It makes it so you might just find other things that can be more profitable.
2. Downvotes can limit how much you actually get. If a popular author writes something that isn't that great, than downvotes should go there. I think we are far away from getting to that state though, given there are much, much bigger fish to fry.