Regarding what posts make money, there are still quite a few kinks that need to be ironed out with how the rewards pool is distributed.
I've used voting bots in certain circumstances, but some people are outright abusing the privilege and corrupting the quality of content that's on the trending page. I'm hoping that the release of SMT's and communities feature will reduce this part of the platform. In terms of when a full release will occur...that's a great question. I'm wondering if they should be concerned about an EOS social networking competitor and if that will push them to go full steem ahead with a more concerted push.