You are right that it's really not worth creating a publication for most people. I don't have any boosting rights and I've never been boosted.

I can only speak from my experience and say that it's not a full-time job to be a publisher/editor because I'm selective with who I add (no AI writers) and I also have a team of editors that help out too.

So, it's really easy to edit and publish because I don't usually have to try to figure out if something is AI or not and they don't make too many mistakes.

My publication guidelines page is at $486 all-time and it earns a few dollars each day. The ironic part is that most of that is from AI writers asking to join. I know of other publications with a guidelines page that's earned over $1k.