almost every website that has decent traffic that we outreach to has a "publisher fee" or asks for a link exchange. If all you are doing is just pitching them your article to post without any return for them you won't succeed.
Absolutely people have good luck doing this or there wouldn't even be anybody to buy from except PBN's and much of outreach is not a private network. What value do you bring the website you want to post on? If there's nothing in it for the site owner there's no reason for them to let you post.