I can understand the appeal of this for a newbie. However, they may not realize how incredibly insignificant these amounts of BTC are, and waste hours hunting two or three cents.
I promise the ad revenue these faucet operators are bringing in is multiple factors higher than the tiny amounts of BTC they give out.
I don't know, I just feel like I should be a cautionary voice to some of the newbs who think this is worth their time... Having your CPU mine is probably a more worthwhile endeavor...
I know there are people who are read this who are trying to get people to those sites because they operate them and profit off of them... I don't have a problem with that, if it makes you money go for it.. just letting people know what they are really getting for their time.
True the amounts are small. However faucets and earning sites are good for newbies who wish to get some BTC / LTC, etc without risking any capital. Some countries are very hard to get fiat onto exchanges from, so these sites open up the crypto world to these people. It is fun and requires minimal effort to use faucets and earning sites. Also once you have a few micro BTC / LTC you can play around on exchanges trading alt coins. These sites will not make you rich but they are a great starting point and a lot of fun for people who are enthusiastic about crypto but unsure if they are ready to invest. As for mining, many people (myself included) don't have a desktop and mining on a laptop CPU will overheat it very quickly and risk hardware damage. I agree with what you are saying that earnings are small for the time it can take, but faucets and earning sites are risk free unlike investing on exhanges or paying out to build a mining rig or buying an ASIC. Hopefully in the future earning sites will pay a better rate for work involved but I feel this is improving with sites like
ABitBack.com being a good example. Some sites are going the other way though, for example the payout per page viewed by using
BitVisitor.com has fallen so dramatically over the past week or so that I personally have used it far less. Keep checking the forums for the latest offers and giveaways is another tip I would give to newbies looking for a small amount of currency to get them started.