I'm no "top of the top" writer but as someone that consistently makes thousands of dollars every month from the MPP, I can give one piece of advice - ALL of the money comes from you hits. And the key to increasing your "minimum" income from Medium (that comes solely from your older articles) is to accumulate a backlog of hit articles.

A backlog of 20 hit articles might earn you between 200 to 500 usd month in month out passively. Think what 100 or 200 can do.

So it burns down to just writing. Aim for virality but don't make that the sole purpose