Both profit and exposure. I've bought into rounds and paid more than I received plenty of times and I continue to do so for the extra followers gained from exposure and the rep from the upvotes. Although rep points dont actually do much.
I actually made more profit by promoting my posts early, that is until they started flagging vote buyers. Vote buyers adjusted and started buying on the last day hoping the flaggers wouldn't have time to hit them up.
Maybe it would help to show good will, stop using it on the last hours for 1-2 weeks, maybe stop for 1-2 weeks in general. Than just use it in the first 1-2 days and see if you get flagged again ;)
@Grumpycat would probably like that so I won't do it. Instead I'll just use him as inspiration for content and continue to expose his hypocrisy.
He's doing far more harm to Steem on a massive scale. More so than vote buyers ever could. At least vote buyers submit posts and try. He just upvotes hidden comment replies that are completely meritless.