I agree with the issue that after 7 days, no money is earned.
I say, that the first fix would be to allow any post with less than 50 upvotes to be reposted after a certain number of days since the end of the initial 7 days. Which would allow for a second chance of payout.
Another fix would be to have a secondary pool for posts that are older than a certain date to earn money from those upvotes that happen way after the 7 day initial payout.
Sounds good. I would tend more in the direction of expanding the 7days too almost a year, if thats possible. This would need a very good ranking system on the content to work. That might lead to more valueable content in general.
I think that the problem now is, the reward pool is too small.
Which is why, a year ago, someone could make $5k on his first post and now most people find it hard to make $0.01 .