Might be ,I am still unaware of intricacies of Steem (Even my account is old but I started taking interest in steem for last 15-20 days).
My personal opinion is that steem will be much better place if paid voting is banned and every user use his votes.

That I do not understand, can he get more rewards, what he voted for you. There whole author- curator relationship looks complex to me. I  only suggest you to use  steem as secondary platform, publish the article first anywhere and give link here to increase the traffic.