IMHO they are looking on trading volumes and rare tokens that you trade. As I remember coin will add on CMC after 50000 USD day trading volume.
Thought so too. Volume attracts not just traders. If your exchange has huge volume, I bet they'd just list it for free. There are some sites like coingecko that will probably list it, there is also coincap.io. You can try it first on these small listing and crypto wiki sites because that could promote your exchange too. I could list your exchange to some other else listing, PM me.