I've been experimenting with this too. I recently went through a phase of mainly self-publishing for a while. My earnings have dropped dramatically in recent months, but that downward slide seemed to begin before my string of self-published articles.

Plus, I have previously had some great successes from self-publishing. So, self-publishing won't necessarily doom you to low views if it's a hot topic and well-written.

Publications can bring you new readers, but not reliably so. It's inconsistent. And large publications are not necessarily better than smaller publications. The number of extra views doesn't seem to scale like that. A publication with 10 times as many followers will not automatically provide you with 10 times as many views.

With publications, it seems best to go niche. Large, broad publications don't really have much value in my opinion. The owner of Illumination was very offended by my study where I concluded that Illumination is too big, too general, with poor quality control (some absolute drivel gets published there). Also, he hadn't realised how many of his editors made changes without asking the writer, which is unprofessional.

It can be helpful when editors offer suggestions for improvement but without making those changes for you. The editors at Doctor Funny are good like that.

I like to self-publish my more controversial articles, though. I don't want anyone messing with those or trying to tone them down.