It's easily to get listed if we have big community because most big exchanges have contest to list a community coin, recently, PundiX won the 7 month community coin and they have a possibility to get listed for free I guess.
Nano never paid to get listed in Binance. It is because of the insane volume at Bitgrail. People wanted it, so exchanges need to list it or miss out on trading fees.
The reason why exchanges charge for listing, they are just monetizing a coin with uncertain future. A coin could be listed in Binance but has no volume at all. Binance would be ok with it since the coin devs paid the fees anyway.