When I first started on Medium (4 or 5 years ago), the advice was to submit to publications to increase your traffic. I didn't find it increased my traffic at all. However, two weeks after moving from South Africa to Germany, I had 600 followers and that month (April 2021), I won the top 1000 writers on Medium and went on to win the next three.

At this point, I genuinely believe that luck and good writing about a hot topic pays the most dividends.