Yeah that is other way to be listed, but there is a compensation from this solution: the coins will be difficult to be uptrend as low transaction volume. In longer time slowly but sure, the coin/token will be dead. That's why usually the community expect the coin/token to be listed in big exchange, and developers sometime avoid this as the cost is very big for small budget. No Pain No Gain....
Not really, all you need is persistence and dedication from dev team and community behind certain coin/project. Easiest way is to try to get listed on some decentralized exchanges, which is what tokens on ETH network do and where they are getting their volume, although there is lack of those when it comes to other coins not based on ethereum blockchain or waves etc.
Thing is if it was easy to list your coin on any exchanges then it would be easier for you to try to pump it and develop till one point when you sell all yours and leave the project. Of course its hard and this is something a lot of dev teams face, but they must overcome this problem by developing their coin/blockchain/project the best it can be and to create the demand.
It is much harder to break through now than it was few years ago when you could get listed on popular exchanges a bit easier, but with huge competition in the space it becomes harder. So exchanges do what they can to take profit but this doesn't mean if your coin is not listed on any exchange that it will die out. Lets take a look at IOTA for instance, they've been trading their IOTAs via slack if I remember well, before it even got to popular exchanges, so persistence is the key I do believe and if you develop good product (with community help to market it) everything else should follow.