Your advice is good and I agree.
My question is a bit more subtle though: Is it really possible for a mining pool to run for months unattended?
How do the server bills at Amazon get paid. (and with what? it can't make much more then about $10 a day in fees). What happens if a coin changes software? an exchange changes interface? and

I realize that no one with answers seems to be talking but the more I think about it the stranger it seems.
Sure.
Not hard to pre-pay for a server for a year. Litecoin hasn't had any hard-forks, and exchange APIs changing to the point of breaking compatibility with existing software is pretty unlikely.