Why does the nominal price matter? Couldn't you buy 1 mBTC (0.001 BTC) for $0.90? That is still 100x what you would get from any faucet. Honestly most of the faucets ARE a waste of time. The operators prey on noobs who don't realize that a ton of ultra tiny dust outputs are very expensive to use in a tx. So you work for weeks and get maybe a couple pennies worth of Bitcoins and to transfer/spend them ends up costing 25%, 50%, maybe even 100% of the value in anti-spam fees.
I *have* bought smaller dribs and drabs, but not everyone can. For some, these faucets and the like are the ONLY way to get their feet wet.