> Ive gotten paid more on my steem posts so far than most musicians earn in royalties across a decade sooo I doubt im being shortchanged

I'm going to join @seanlloyd in playing the devil's advocate here. :D

The *shortchanging* is especially significant when you have a post which tends to rank very well in search engines and continues to get both traffic and upvotes for months after the rewards window was closed.

With the ever-growing Steem ecosystem this is going to become a more often felt sentiment as well. Two platforms where the 7 days window may be shortchanging would be Steemhunt (upcoming ProductHunt on the Steem blockchain) and any Q&A project like [What Q&A](https://steemit.com/steem/@fknmayhem/the-first-decentralized-quora-alternative-now-available-as-a-mobile-app-on-the-steem-blockchain) (apologies for link to own article about it but the Steem account of the project is less detailed in info IMHO).

In both examples, there is a case to be made for the content to have longer lasting value than the 7 days window. A solid product (say Vessel) is a solid product, not merely for 7 days. Same applies to a great answer to a question. 

Both should be able to continue to be rewarded.

Fair enough. Maybe for the average musician, the short-term payout is ideal.

Maybe it's easier to see with something more common...

How about the person who posts a tutorial -- spends 10 hours researching, writing, proofing. No one finds it in 7 days, so they get 0 upvotes, $0. Then people come to find it later through search terms. Over then next few years, they get 200 upvotes. Then let's say they have 100 posts more or less like that.

The long tail of work adds up to real value. And yet...

### Author rewards = $0
### Value donated to Steem blockchain way more than $0
(1,000 hours of work for quality content)