Traditional Publishing vs. Self Publishing

Hi everyone - I'm fairly new to this site (joined about a week ago) and I have to say I'm enjoying myself a lot!

So I have a question in regards to traditional publishing vs. self publishing. I'm looking into getting a collection of my love/romantic poems published (a collection of about 55 poems). Has anyone here ever gotten a collection published? If so, what method did you use or recommend? Even if you haven't gotten a collection published, any advice or experience you can give is welcome.

I've already submitted my poetry manuscript to a publishing company that runs poetry manuscript contests every year (JACAR press). I submitted it 2 months ago and it takes them 3 months to let you know if you're a finalist. But I definitely want to be proactive and not place all my eggs in one basket. Should I continue to enter contests and submit my manuscript to publishers or is self publishing more effective?

Also, I wouldn't mind looking into publishing it as an ebook, if anyone has any pointers on that. I also know that it's good to submit individual poems to journals/magazines, to kind of get your name out there and become more credible (which I am also doing). However, since I just recently began submitting my poetry (though I've been writing forever) I haven't won any contests or publications in journals/magazines yet.

Any advice is appreciated. If there's already a topic on this, please forgive me and be so kind as to point me in the direction of that thread.

This has been discussed so many times before...this thread should help you out: http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/workshop/read/6814/15/

Self publishing on a serious level is a lot more than just printing your work at your copy center and selling it at flea markets ...

http://www.pw.org/content/selfpublishing_perspectives

Contests: http://www.pw.org/grants

I strongly recommend subscribing to Poets & Writers magazine

Just don't pay hundreds of dollars to be traditionally published, it's a trap... Unless you're getting 50% of all profits or something.

you should never have to pay to be published unless it's self-publishing and you're paying for the physical copies