Been 6 years on the platform, and I can confirm your approach works. I took a similar approach and posted entirely free for 5.5 years, while growing an audience and feeling no pressure to write. Then I moved many of my posts behind the paywall. There’s a publication I post in where I always post free articles and yes, I put just as much effort into those as the others. Also, don’t forget about the friend link you can share, which essentially allows you to have a paywalled article and make money but also have anyone with the link be able to access it freely, say if you want to share it on LinkedIn for example or a Facebook group.