Good luck with the endeavour. I think the introduction of the friend tier in December was a real help. Especially for those of us with small audiences, but that are largely made up of fellow writers, who have the highest FoM sign-up rate.

Friends of Medium who engage with a post and also follow you after reading it are particularly valuable under the current earnings formula, so it's maybe worth trying out a few new, smallish pubs, as a way of your work being noticed by a dedicated hardcore of reader-writers with lots of FoMs among them.