I know, I know, that first half hour is key if you want your post to get into the hot section but let´s analyse the pros and cons of this issue together.
Whether you are a newbie or an experienced Steemian, I´m sure you´ve heard of Curation rewards but do you know how they really work?
A lot of people like 
Ok ok but I have to dig a bit into how Curation Rewards work, right? I´m going to put it as simple as I can and without numbers so every newbie understands:
When you post, there is a 15 minute window where every upvote given to your post, goes directly to you. Then between the 15-30 minute window, every vote you get will be shared between the person who voted you (a small percentage) and yourself (a very big percentage). When the post reaches the 30 minute mark, every vote you get will be shared with the person who votes you ( a slightly bigger percentage of what it was in the 15-30 minute window) and your post. But this number depends on how many previous votes and money your post already has...
This means, if a whale sees your post when it has already been 35 minutes after you posted, and it has 30 cents and 3 votes and it is a good post, made with effort and quality chances are this big user will vote on it.
BUT...
If you upvote your post in the first minute and then use several bidbots to get that same post to, let´s say a number, 6 dollars and 20 votes, even if the whale thinks the post deserves a big vote, the curation rewards will be lower than in the first scenario, so chances are this full of Steem user might not vote on it or if it does, it probably won´t be with the same percentage.
I am not saying you shouldn´t vote on your posts... by all means, do it! If you like using bidbots to boost some of your posts, be my guest! This is just a friendly advice from someone who takes curation rewards as something important for the platform.
I am still voting for the posts I like or think they have amazing quality regardless of the pending payout, and writing about this subject might bring replies like I only care about getting curation rewards but no, my friend, if you look closely to my voting behaviour for the past 4 days (using steemd or steemdb), you´ll see I vote on posts even if they have 20 cents or 8 dollars of pending rewards. I´m just telling you this because now that I am on the "voting" side, I understand how much of a difference (Curation reward wise) it can be voting an already big post, or voting for an underrated post.
I´m bringing this topic to the table just for one reason, probably, probably the strategy of voting on your post in the first minute and the use of bidbots in first minutes of your posts is working against your success instead of in favor of getting those precious rewards we all want.
I would like to read your thoughts about this, perhaps I am seeing this issue from a perspective not so accurate or you have another angle I should consider.
Oh by the way! I do selfvote, but I do it hours after I post, that way you can get some rewards out of your vote ^^