I'm interested in writing a novel, but I need some insight

I have written a couple dozen tickling stories and I am now branching out into short mainstream fiction in my spare time as well, so my craft has vastly improved over the last few years. I have an idea for a full-length, honest-to-god tickling novel that I could complete by years' end, but if I do that, it can't ONLY be a labor of love, I'll have to make some money with it.

Is the best option just to self-publish and charge a fee? Or set up a go fund me page and if/when I reach the goal, give it away for free? Or is there another option I'm not thinking of?

Any advice would be welcome.

I have my writing degree, but have not sat done to write my believed in novel for years. I myself would prefer being more legitimate in my mind and getting published the old fashioned way, but Lord of the Rings was rejected 13 times. So I don't know. I have heard of a few authors being very successful the self published route though.

Self-publishing is becoming more and more feasible by the day. There are pros and cons to both. I only know of one other tickle novel out there so there's at least an audience for it. I would say be careful with self-publishing currently though, as people have figured out how to return books after they've read them and then the author has to cover the cost of the return because Amazon won't.
With Self-publishing, you keep almost all the profits, but you have to do everything yourself. You tend to make more money if your halfway successful but it's harder to be successful and well known unless you're good at self promoting.
With Traditional, you don't get nearly as much of the profits (depending on the contract) but all the back end stuff is mostly done for you.
You could also do both e-book and print on demand with self-publishing. That's what my wife is planning on doing soon, as well as me. My only hurdle currently is the cost of a cover illustrator.
Go-fund me or Kickstarter is an option as well. With Kickstarter, you'd need some sort of goals however for how much you raise. Go-fund-me I would think allows you to make a large sum at once then just give the books to people who donated. From there you'd have to continue putting the book out there though so those are more 1 time deal things.
Hope that helped.

Thanks for the advice. I will look into various options and make a decision by the end of July.