Let's see.

Humor is good. Have you seen Hogan Torah's numbers? The man is a literary Seinfeld, he writes about nothing. But he's humorous, people love that.

When people tell you that "doomism" sells, they are talking about Umiar and and Jessica Wildflower. Both of them are superb writers who crank out high quality content on a daily basis.

They are reporters/analysts, the Medium equivalent of Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddows. They are very good at what they do.

You can draft off of them.

Read their stuff and make intelligent comments. People will notice and some of them will follow you.

You can specialize which I do but then you have to build a niche audience. It's a slow process.

A semi-sleazy way to build your numbers is to just follow hundreds of people. A lot of people will follow you if you follow them.

This will get your stuff in a lot of peoples feeds. If you don't alienate them with spam articles, a lot of people will let you stay in their feeds for ages.

Sometimes they will even read your stuff. If you are lucky they will start applauding pieces.

This is key, if people clap on things the algo will put it in the feeds of people who follow them. When someone claps on your work it acts like a multiplier and boosts the chance that your work will be seen by others.

Which is why you should clap when you read something you like. I'm up to 600 followers and I still notice the people who applaud.

People are more likely to clap on your articles if you clap on theirs. It's how you build your network.

Hope this was helpful.