Well I think you are missing the point on other kind of services like; SmartMarket, where you sell your upvote to other users. This by itself is quite profitable, and even it has a twitch to promote quality content.

Once you register for the service you can choose to what type of users you want to support, all kind, 1 to 3 stars, or even specific users you love. The whitelist process is quite standard and we look to provide a balanced growth avoiding exploit of the tool.

If you want to know more check;

I am about to finish a month of using delegate power to sell my upvotes and I am about to make a post on the topic, so far is quite close to break even, even more counting on curation rewards.