When I started out on steemit a few months ago I wrote a few really good posts that hardly got any upvotes and after 7 days I got no payment for those posts. Since I was a beginner I didn't know about upvote and promotion bots. I think a few people who were on steemit before hardfork 17 feel my same frustration because those kinds of bots didn't even exist back then as we know them now.
I do believe the 7 day payout window does work. If I create a post on steemit I can hopefully get paid after 7 days. If I want to earn more after that post then I need to create more new content and that cycle promotes more new material. It would be great though if steemit would allow, maybe after a year the post was made and didn't get a payout, to have another attempt at a 7 day period to try to get a payout for the post. If I were in charge it would just be a second and final chance after a year the post was made for steemit users with a certain reputation number or higher. Something like a +50 reputation or greater.