>>1
Writing for a magazine never was profitable. One did that only to somewhat promote himself.
Say, you publish a short story. What do you get? A $50 check several month later, maybe. Is it profitable? Not quite so. You wouldn't be able to even properly support yourself, even if you write dozens of short stories for dozens of magazines; profit is out of question.
A different story is non-fiction, it can give you some relative profit, but we aren't tlaking about that, I gather.
Now, self-promotion these days doesn't require paper. You can publish you writing for free - and for widest of all audiences - online. You can even earn a buck or two if you participate in adverticement programs, sign up for google ads for example, and such. You might as well use one of those numerous places that publish your content online and manage your ads for a little percent (you never have to pay beforehand or something). The only catch for this is that you won't earn no serious money; but it never was different with magazines either, really. And this time around you don't even have to deal with small publishers, sell publishing right, beg to be published and such: everyone can be published for hundreds of millions worth audience in an instant and for free. It's only up to you to write short stories that are good enough to warrant popularity and, hence, future profits.
Really, internet popularity is worth much for artists. You aren't the same as that "famous" RO or Lineage player, or random shitty blogger; you're writing fiction, and you offer things people might develop a demand for. People gotta be your friends to be interested in your naked opinion on things; but people don't have to be anything to be interested in quality prose, especially if they get it for free.