What are Faucet sites for?

[Anyone]

Ive been writing a guide to free bitcoins and I cant find an explanation for WHY people would run a faucet site. (I know what faucet sites do, and where to find them, just not WHY they are there)

The obvious answer would be advertising, but Id expect most advertisers would want to advertise on more professional looking sites so that doesn't really make sense to me. The pittance paid for just viewing the ads would barely cover the Satoshi they give away.. (I think) and most people getting free bitcoins wont be clicking on the links, so I'm wondering if it is about something else?

I considered it might be about building traffic to a domain name but I cant see how that's useful..finding the one domain name that might actually be valuable to someone selling taps would probably be harder than Bitcoin mining! (I think)

Philanthropic venture to share the love is another possibility but I cant believe there would be thousands of people out there feeling that generous to complete strangers (but maybe Im just a cynic)

Can anyone explain it for me? none of the answers I have found make logical sense.

[Ardenyham]

Ive been writing a guide to free bitcoins and I cant find an explanation for WHY people would run a faucet site. (I know what faucet sites do, and where to find them, just not WHY they are there)

The obvious answer would be advertising, but Id expect most advertisers would want to advertise on more professional looking sites so that doesn't really make sense to me. The pittance paid for just viewing the ads would barely cover the Satoshi they give away.. (I think) and most people getting free bitcoins wont be clicking on the links, so I'm wondering if it is about something else?

I considered it might be about building traffic to a domain name but I cant see how that's useful..finding the one domain name that might actually be valuable to someone selling taps would probably be harder than Bitcoin mining! (I think)

Philanthropic venture to share the love is another possibility but I cant believe there would be thousands of people out there feeling that generous to complete strangers (but maybe Im just a cynic)

Can anyone explain it for me? none of the answers I have found make logical sense.

Laudering bitcoins can be next, you know to help mixing the coins

[Jacce]

The faucet owners mostly earn very little or nothing at all. I'd say most people running a faucet is doing it to promote Bitcoin. There's also some people in there for the profit (advertisement money), but they ain't earning much.

[Bitcoin Is A Great Idea]

Advertisement revenue isn't as low as you might think. I don't think the faucets make much money, but I think that, most of the times, the advertisements cover the expenses of the bitcoin payments.

[Anyone]

Laudering bitcoins can be next, you know to help mixing the coins

Im curious why would anyone need to do that to launder them? just transfer to a few random wallets, take it to an offline wallet and print a paper wallet. Laundering would only make sense if it was also coming back in from somewhere..but I dont know anyone who gives their free bitcoins back

[hieroglyph]

The faucets are for new members in the Bitcoin community who want to get a better understanding what it is like too receive and send bitcoins for the first time.  Also you get to keep the coins and watch you total grow from small denominations.

[cryptoprime]

Faucets drip a few coins into a wallet, often this is a beginner's first sip/taste of a particular coin. This eventually leads the user to a healthy thirst for knowledge. If you'd like to promote and grow a coin's adoption rate/ user base, faucets are a great way too.

[cadernera]

I think it is s smart way to get people involved in cryptos. This may attract some users which otherwise would have never entered to this world. More people involved means more propaganda for bitcoin!

I'd say overall is a marketing strategy to get new people.  The small ammount you give in the faucet will be recovered by the increase of price.

[Vitealo]

People just love the concept of "free".
Though it is not much, say 100 satoshi, people get addicted and keep visiting the faucet sites every day lol

[johnbellemere]

I think it's a complete lost of time, I connected everyday for nearly two weeks to 10 different faucets. The amount I finally got was 0.00013588. It does not even cover the transaction fees of 0.0002 BTC if I want to play Satoshi circle...

[Lewis2]

That's the thing with money, its never free. Now lets get a job everybody and forget about faucets.

[codegeek]

From what I've seen and read here people will do anything to get some free coin, even if it amounts to nearly nothing. I think the rhetoric reads about bitcoin being a great investment has everyone thinking; if they hold on to these micro amounts, they'll be worth something big next year, BUT I'm not so sure of that so I don't want to invest real money yet.

Early adoption is gone in my opinion. I don't think we're going to see the 10k / 20k numbers some are predicting in 2014. I think 13 was Bitcoins year. Millionaires were made already.

[ajax3592]

Other than the adsense advantage for faucet owners.

Faucets can help newbies figure out how transaction work. They can view their address in blockchain, and so on.

[Anyone]

There are some lovely answers on here, and all describe pretty altruistic agendas behind faucets..

Am I being too cycnical wondering if there is, in fact, something more to them?

Does anyone on here run a faucet site, and if so.. why? (I hope that isnt rude, I really am curious) 

[mindfulmojo]

Simply put... Traffic.

If I run an ad campaign I am quite willing to pay 1/10 of cent per visitor.

If you can turn this traffic into profit, then you are doing good.

It all depends on your links / banners you put up...

All easier said than done. Not too many are turning a profit,

but some I guess, are actually doing to help out new bitcoiners....