Off to publication: Where? Why?

I guess is hard to know when exactly is your paper ready to take a life of its own into the pages of a journal. Moreover, which journal and how to optimize your submission. These are pretty tough questions, one needs to answer on its own. What I personally did to try in figuring out which journal to target is to answer to the questions below and then fine-tune your search accordingly:
1. What kind of CONTRIBUTION you make (theory/empirics) (major/minor) etc?
2. What is the TOP JOURNAL for your field?
3. Where do most of your references come from?
4. Decide between "diversify" or stick with your "pack" of the literature?
5. Inter-temporal trade-offs: Do you have 1-2 years to publish in a top 20 journal or you need a publication faster?
6. Ask people around (although you may easily get "no convergence" between answers and even a huge dispersion, pending on the other person's background, preferences, abilities and aim).
Good luck!