can someone explain me why do people give btc to others solve captchas, faucets?

[bitmover]

Hello.

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

I know it is almost nothing, but what is in for themm? Website clicks to get more visitors, revenue from ads?

[gentlemand]

Ad revenue in the main. Why advertisers pay for the totally worthless clicks users are tricked into carrying out is beyond me but there must be enough of a hit rate to make it worthwhile. I've also read that if you create good faucet software you can licence it to others for a nice sum.

This is a breakdown by someone who ran one - https://99bitcoins.com/complete-beginners-guide-make-money-bitcoin-faucet/

It's an area I find very mysterious. And pointless.

[akamit]

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

By simplifying my answer and to make you understand easily, I would say about faucet is "Pay money to make money". A simple and straight concept.

I know it is almost nothing, but what is in for themm? Website clicks to get more visitors, revenue from ads?

If you are a faucet earner alone then it is not worth the time and effort. Though there are still users who visit faucets to earn some satoshis. These users maybe visit 100s of faucets daily. In my opinion, the percentage is not much for this type of users.

There are users who have marketing skill and they can pull other users under them as referrals and if someone can make a good team then they can make a decent income in my opinion. The time and effort will pay you back.


Now regarding the faucet business,
It is not profitable anymore like before with a simple faucet or you can say traditional system. That's why nowadays peoples try to bring something new which will attract users.
If you see old and new faucets then you will notice they added up new features with the traditional faucet system... As an example Freebitco.in, Cointiply (not sure if they are still active or not).

It's a hard challenge though for faucet owners now, most of the top ad networks don't accept faucets nowadays unless they have a different unique concept. Traditional faucet system is dead in my opinion.

A faucet can only survive when they can implement several ways to generate revenue with unique features.

[LTU_btc]

Shortly is all about the money. Faucet owners are getting revenue from advertisements and they are paying part of this round back to their users. Captchas are needed to stop bots, otherwise without captcha faucet would be left empty without funds just in a few minutes. I see that you registered here in the end of 2017, so you probably missed times when faucets was a thing and it was possible to earn decent number of BTC in quite short time. Current faucets can't be compared with these thad we had 3-4 years ago.

Ad revenue in the main. Why advertisers pay for the totally worthless clicks users are tricked into carrying out is beyond me but there must be enough of a hit rate to make it worthwhile.

Well, it's probably main reason why Google Adsense banned all faucets 3 or 4 years ago. Now usually you won't find high quality ads on faucets - usually it's gambling websites, NSFW websites, affiliate links and ponzi schemes advertised here.

And pointless.

I could argue with this statement. In past faucets were great thing. Huge number of people (including myself) got introduced to Bitcoin and crypto through faucets. But now as akamit said, traditional faucet business is dying.

[Thirdspace]

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

faucet owner pay people to visit the site for page views/impressions hence revenue from ads
they're not getting paid for solving captchas, but captcha is used to deter abuse
without it, the site would get robbed and incurred a net loss in its operations

the original faucet's purpose was to introduce bitcoin to people,
then it evolves into money making scheme, which may be profitable depending the site's strategy
but most faucets would eventually be abused or turned scam

[milewilda]

Hello.

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

I know it is almost nothing, but what is in for themm? Website clicks to get more visitors, revenue from ads?

All of the above.Faucet site owners do need to throw money for them to earn too knowing that a site can be monetized thru
ads and traffic.This is what faucet site owners are targeting on,i dont know if its profitable for long term but currently seeing on how many faucet sites
in the market,you can see a few numbers but totally die later on which proves out that its pointless to build one.

[shield132]

Hello.

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

I know it is almost nothing, but what is in for themm? Website clicks to get more visitors, revenue from ads?

Short and easy answer: They pay because they get more revenue from those people.
Long answer: Faucet is a way of collecting bitcoins, the reason why you get captcha is to determine whether you are human or not. If you are human, then welcome. You claim bitcoin and then what? Boom, there are some advertisements on my faucet, there is some chance you'll get interested in it, if not you, then there will be another person. When they click, I get some money, even if you don't click, the fact that you see advertisement in nice for me too. In overall, I give you reward and you give me too but unlike you, I get reward from thousands of people and you get only from me or from 1-2 faucet.

[stompix]

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

faucet owner pay people to visit the site for page views/impressions hence revenue from ads
they're not getting paid for solving captchas, but captcha is used to deter abuse
without it, the site would get robbed and incurred a net loss in its operations

There are sites that pay for solving captchas, the same "work" as in doing faucets.

Basically, there are services there that need to bypass captchas en masse for various reasons and services that sell you a "captcha solver" which is basically an API that sends your captcha to some 3rd world solver which does it at a rate of cents per thousands.
People get paid pennies for staying hours a day glued to the screen and solving those.

But, captcha solvers actually do something useful, faucets...

[akamit]

they're not getting paid for solving captchas, but captcha is used to deter abuse
without it, the site would get robbed and incurred a net loss in its operations

I ran two faucets in 2016 and on the basis of my practical experience I can say captcha doesn't help all the time to prevent abuses.
I remember, one day my faucet had a huge attack and my balance was drying out. I had nothing to do except to sit & watch, later I found out a list of bad IPs (iirc then it was more than 10000) to blacklist.

Behind the scene, it's a lot of work a faucet owner need to do, at that time faucetbox didn't offer an advanced script... no account registrations as an example.

but most faucets would eventually be abused or turned scam

Yes faucets can be abused...

But I don't agree with "turned scam" for all because not all faucets in the past and now don't offer deposit except some such as freebitcoin.
So those faucets who haven't offered deposits can't be called scam if they shut down the faucet. Users haven't lost any money.

[LTU_btc]

they're not getting paid for solving captchas,

It's not fully correct. There are few captcha providers who are paying to website owners, for example SolveMedia. Ad is displayed in their captcha and this is source of money. But it's so insignificant that website owner will have to wait few years to reach payment treshold. Also, there was Coinhive proof of work captcha with CPU miner  and they also paid to their users.

But I don't agree with "turned scam" for all because not all faucets in the past and now don't offer deposit except some such as freebitcoin.
So those faucets who haven't offered deposits can't be called scam if they shut down the faucet. Users haven't lost any money.

I don't agree with you. Imagine you're claiming from faucet for few months to reach 50 000 Satoshi payout treshold. And at the end you won't get paid. Is it not scam? IMO it's like to join signature campaign/bounty and don't get paid from it.

[akamit]

But I don't agree with "turned scam" for all because not all faucets in the past and now don't offer deposit except some such as freebitcoin.
So those faucets who haven't offered deposits can't be called scam if they shut down the faucet. Users haven't lost any money.

I don't agree with you. Imagine you're claiming from faucet for few months to reach 50 000 Satoshi payout treshold. And at the end you won't get paid. Is it not scam? IMO it's like to join signature campaign/bounty and don't get paid from it.

I said, "not all faucets". Yes, your point is valid.

You know that there are three types of faucets, (1) faucets with deposit options + payout threshold (2) faucets with payout threshold, no deposits (3) faucets with instant pay to the micro wallet

So 1 and 2 can turn into a scam, but 3 is not. I believe the majority of the faucets are type 3 but those are not famous enough. 1 and 2 types are less in number but can be turned into a scam anytime.

[maydna]

Hello.

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

I know it is almost nothing, but what is in for themm? Website clicks to get more visitors, revenue from ads?

I guess that is because they want to get more revenue from the ads. I see that many websites use another advertisement as the publisher, and they can add the code, and the visitor will click if they found some interesting information. That will be a great way for the owner because they can get additional income from the advertisement and sometimes, the income will be bigger too.

Besides that, people will not complain if somehow the rewards from the faucet are too small because there will be many other people will visit the site, and some of them will click the ads too. But every people will have a different reason why they do that thing, and we don't know what their purpose.

[AdolfinWolf]

they're not getting paid for solving captchas,

It's not fully correct. There are few captcha providers who are paying to website owners, for example SolveMedia. Ad is displayed in their captcha and this is source of money. But it's so insignificant that website owner will have to wait few years to reach payment treshold. Also, there was Coinhive proof of work captcha with CPU miner  and they also paid to their users.

But I don't agree with "turned scam" for all because not all faucets in the past and now don't offer deposit except some such as freebitcoin.
So those faucets who haven't offered deposits can't be called scam if they shut down the faucet. Users haven't lost any money.

I don't agree with you. Imagine you're claiming from faucet for few months to reach 50 000 Satoshi payout treshold. And at the end you won't get paid. Is it not scam? IMO it's like to join signature campaign/bounty and don't get paid from it.

I mean, if you're anno 2019 still claiming from faucets that do not use faucethub/any other microwallet, you're just bound to get scammed. (Unless it's a faucet like Moonbitcoin, although those are also shady.)

Hello.

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

I know it is almost nothing, but what is in for themm? Website clicks to get more visitors, revenue from ads?

I guess that is because they want to get more revenue from the ads. I see that many websites use another advertisement as the publisher, and they can add the code, and the visitor will click if they found some interesting information. That will be a great way for the owner because they can get additional income from the advertisement and sometimes, the income will be bigger too.

Besides that, people will not complain if somehow the rewards from the faucet are too small because there will be many other people will visit the site, and some of them will click the ads too. But every people will have a different reason why they do that thing, and we don't know what their purpose.

Hmm. I don't think many serious advertising networks still accept faucets though, especially low traffic faucets are a big nono. (Although i feel like bigger ones really aren't that much better regarding their traffic quality.)

I haven't ran a faucet for awhile, but the only thing i remembered making good money was stuff like Popads, that is until my site got banned from there for reasons i still don't understand. Probably just low quality traffic.

There are sites that pay for solving captchas, the same "work" as in doing faucets.

Basically, there are services there that need to bypass captchas en masse for various reasons and services that sell you a "captcha solver" which is basically an API that sends your captcha to some 3rd world solver which does it at a rate of cents per thousands.
People get paid pennies for staying hours a day glued to the screen and solving those.

But, captcha solvers actually do something useful, faucets...

Yep, i guess if you have a few thousand proxies lying around, this would be a great way to make some bucks duping faucet owners. I'm pretty sure this has also been done before.

I ran two faucets in 2016 and on the basis of my practical experience I can say captcha doesn't help all the time to prevent abuses.
I remember, one day my faucet had a huge attack and my balance was drying out. I had nothing to do except to sit & watch, later I found out a list of bad IPs (iirc then it was more than 10000) to blacklist.

Doesn't faucethub offer like a max hourly rate of satoshi's being given out? I think these measures have improved somewhat over the years, but still, they don't really combat someone who actually puts some effort into cheating your faucet.

[akamit]

I ran two faucets in 2016 and on the basis of my practical experience I can say captcha doesn't help all the time to prevent abuses.
I remember, one day my faucet had a huge attack and my balance was drying out. I had nothing to do except to sit & watch, later I found out a list of bad IPs (iirc then it was more than 10000) to blacklist.

Doesn't faucethub offer like a max hourly rate of satoshi's being given out? I think these measures have improved somewhat over the years, but still, they don't really combat someone who actually puts some effort into cheating your faucet.

I haven't used FaucetHub at that time so don't know much about it, Faucethub doesn't exist when I ran my faucets afair. I used faucetbox for my faucets.

[LTU_btc]

So 1 and 2 can turn into a scam, but 3 is not. I believe the majority of the faucets are type 3 but those are not famous enough. 1 and 2 types are less in number but can be turned into a scam anytime.

1 and 2 type of faucets is the most risky, especially with big payout treshold. Unless it's well know faucet which are working for long time already. Faucets which pay to microwallets can't turn into scam. But microwallet can - remember epay.info or faucetsystem.com...

Doesn't faucethub offer like a max hourly rate of satoshi's being given out? I think these measures have improved somewhat over the years, but still, they don't really combat someone who actually puts some effort into cheating your faucet.

I'm not sure about Faucethub, but Faucetbox had this thing. But even security limits didn't helped to protect my faucet, bots somehow managed to steal my ballance. Probably it was loophole in faucet script. At least in past cheating faucets was very profitable activity. Faucets weren't protected very well. Now Faucethub have fancy Anti-Fraud system for users with Premium membership and I don't see many people complaining about bots. Now ad revenue is the main issue for faucet owners.

[examplens]

I'm not sure about Faucethub, but Faucetbox had this thing. But even security limits didn't helped to protect my faucet, bots somehow managed to steal my ballance. Probably it was loophole in faucet script. At least in past cheating faucets was very profitable activity. Faucets weren't protected very well. Now Faucethub have fancy Anti-Fraud system for users with Premium membership and I don't see many people complaining about bots. Now ad revenue is the main issue for faucet owners.

I remember these days, every day adding new BTC addresses to the blacklist, IP's ... but still, if you miss something, the balance going to zero very fast.
I trying many faucets scripts, trying to find more protected, but I think one of them left keylogger on my pc and made my big loss.

[maydna]

Hello.

I was thinking, why do people pay to other people solve captchas? Why do people pay anything on those faucets at all?

I know it is almost nothing, but what is in for themm? Website clicks to get more visitors, revenue from ads?

I guess that is because they want to get more revenue from the ads. I see that many websites use another advertisement as the publisher, and they can add the code, and the visitor will click if they found some interesting information. That will be a great way for the owner because they can get additional income from the advertisement and sometimes, the income will be bigger too.

Besides that, people will not complain if somehow the rewards from the faucet are too small because there will be many other people will visit the site, and some of them will click the ads too. But every people will have a different reason why they do that thing, and we don't know what their purpose.

Hmm. I don't think many serious advertising networks still accept faucets though, especially low traffic faucets are a big nono. (Although i feel like bigger ones really aren't that much better regarding their traffic quality.)

I haven't ran a faucet for awhile, but the only thing i remembered making good money was stuff like Popads, that is until my site got banned from there for reasons i still don't understand. Probably just low quality traffic.

Although it's not too many advertising networks, it doesn't mean we cannot make an additional income from the website. I remember that I join the advertising networks and although I don't have many visitors, I still make some money at the end of the month.

But yes, they can not join with the Google Adsense because I heard that Google prohibited their publisher from entering with them if the website related to the cryptocurrency. But I don't know the conditions for now, and I hope that Google will allow them to register their website as the publisher.

[badykvik]

This as you have said has a lot to do with website advertising.
There are various types of web ads, there is cpm, cpa, cpl and so on.
The captcha and faucet offers cpm ads on there website where they earn some cash based on 1000 impresions, clicks are not necessary.
They however pay their users from the profits earned.

[Strongkored]

As mentioned above, it is mainly to get money from their web visitors, so it's normal because faucet owners will get more than they spend to make and give gifts but to my knowledge it happened a few years ago before Bitcoin reached high price. Many faucet owner shutting down their faucet because not received profit again.

[stompix]

they're not getting paid for solving captchas,

It's not fully correct. There are few captcha providers who are paying to website owners, for example SolveMedia. Ad is displayed in their captcha and this is source of money.

There are users who are paid to solve captchas, just as there are people who buy captcha solvers.
2captcha dot com is one of them providing "solutions" for both sides.
1$ to have your next 1000 annoying captchas solved and 20-30 cents for solving a thousand of them.

Checking the rates on some other services, still around 40-80 cents per 1000, that kind of explains why Venezuelans are playing Runescape to earn some $ and not solving captchas.

Either way, probably the lowest paying work in this world