Later it became very attractive for webmasters to get huge traffic. Simply buying an audience ... I've been there as well but few hacks and fact the major advertising companies cease accepting such traffic forced me to quit.
For me using faucets was a great start (I've been riding them a lot) but they never worth it at the time of using.
The positive comes when coin price skyrockets and you kept your free claimed coins ... and this logic still applies today.
So if you believe BTC (or some other coin) will increase in value then you can say it's worth it.
Thats true and it looks so funny now, that faucet was giving 5 bitcoins per claim lol in 2011! This is how Gavin told folks about his experiment:
Gavin: "For my first Bitcoin coding project, I decided to do something that sounds really dumb: I created a web site that gives away Bitcoins. Five ฿ per customer, first come first served, I've stocked it with ฿1,100 to start."