I've done all those things. In fact, I gain a couple dozen new followers every month, write a lot, comment, do social media. But that doesn't guarantee more income. The "algo" has been known to suggest 5 stories TOTALLY unrelated to mine. I have been making less a month than 2 years ago, when I wrote less often and hardly commented and had half the number of followers I do now.

I wish Medium would bring back showing the tags each story was given by the author, with links to that topic, like they did a couple of years ago. Then readers could explicitly decide which of the tags the AUTHOR thought were relevant were of interest to them to click on.