I'm up to 956 followers now, hope to hit 1000 by the end of the year as well.
Publish0x certainly is rather lucrative and while I see Hive/Leo as my home, it's coming in a close second place. Also, in general, my articles seem to do a lot better on Publish0x than on LeoFinance. My recent article from yesterday has almost 4000 vies over on Publish0x, really happy with that.