Voting after the timer only works if there are no/few votes already during the timer. That's generally not the case for well-known content, so if you do have the chance to get in the first vote after the timer, this is lesser-known content for which curation should be more rewarded, but where you are also likely taking a chance on whether the content will get significantly more votes anyway. If it doesn't then you get some curation share from your own vote but it isn't much, relatively speaking.

There is nothing wrong with some people curating for profit and others doing so in a more casual manner. It is exactly the same as anything else in life where some people will devote a lot of effort to optimizing and strategizing and generally get more out of it and others won't.