Dialect poet/song writer I know most about is Robert Anderson (1770-1833) of Carlisle, sometimes styled 'The Cumberland Bard'. He certainly aimed to make money out of his poetry and song. His first productions were songs for London's Vauxhall pleasure gardens at end of eighteenth century, and were set by James Hook. Back in Cumberland after his London interlude he found his dialect ballads had some local popularity and was encouraged to publish them. He was keen market and promote his creations as the textile industry in which he worked (he was a pattern-drawer for a calico printer) was in a bad state in the early nineteenth century.
Some of his 'Cumberland ballads', usually with a specified 'air' like those of Burns, who Anderson admired, were published in broadside and chapbook form - for most of which Anderson would have received no remuneration - but most were collected into popular editions for local consumption, usually published by subscription.
Some of his ballads were still being sung in the twentieth century and were collected by Vaughan Williams, Annie Gilchrist and others, and recorded later in the century. The songs which persisted longest though seem to be those arranged by local composers in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and performed at local concerts. It's a complicated picture and not one easily reduced to 'folk' and 'commercial' categories.