I think you need to play by the rules of the game if you want to score the highest points. From what I read on the Medium blogs, we should be focusing on attracting new followers directly from our stories (not through comments) and getting readers to follow via email. These improve the story earnings calculation.
Also, boosted content outearns regular stories, so getting the attention of the nominators is the name of the game. Ariel posted a long list of editors and publications a couple of weeks back:
https://blog.medium.com/meet-60-publishers-in-the-boost-nomination-pilot-bb4923442864