Yep you can still pay for upvotes and see it more as PROMOTION... but it's not gonna work as a money making strategy anymore... just for promotion. In fact I've seen posts that use paid votes state something along the lines of "I understand if you downvote me it's the price of paying for votes to promote a post". 

So it's still doable to use paid votes just know it comes along with people making sure the person isn't using paid votes as a way to ROI. 

Also i'm of the personal opinion that steem rewards pool isn't a solid or dependable way to make money but we're working on making SteemPeak much more interesting than steem reward pool dynamics if that's of any consequence.