The better way is to maintain good trading volume through uniswap, Pancakeswap, and other similar platforms. As said these days most are using the BSC network than ETH network. Then from here one can try for tier 3 exchanges, tier 2 exchanges and further to the tier 1 exchanges. Without money to make this possible won't happen overnight, the project needs to travel long.
Trading on uniswap and pancakeswap is not a bad thing for exchange 1 for projects that are minimal in fundraising but have a serious aim to improve the development of the project roadmap, so that liquidity over time will increase after the project gets a positive response from investors. Exchange mexc and kucoin will usually consider submitting a listing application based on the liquidity of trading tokens on dex.