What is a Faucet?
The concept of bitcoin faucets was developed in 2010 by Gavin Adresen to stimulate public interest in bitcoin and turn people on to the world of cryptocurrencies. If you don’t already know, Bitcoin faucets are a website or app that dispense very small amounts of bitcoin in the form of satoshis (1 satoshi = 10^-8 BTC). These micro transactions are funded by you, the site owner. Visitors claim their reward by completing a captcha or small task on the website and are usually rewarded in anywhere from 100-1000 satoshis. They make money from traffic that corresponds to clicks, pageviews, and thus ad revenue. They cost money to host, however, the main objective to make profit margins high is to form an ecosystem where ad revenue is greater than the cost of the bitcoins you give away.
I was immediately interested in the potential of bitcoin faucets as a source of passive income. Sites like FaucetBox combined with a cheap web host make this a very reasonable endeavor. FaucetBox has an API that provides an out-of-the-box solution to make a simple site. They charge a 2.5% fee each time you deposit bitcoin into it for the service of handling all the transactions.
Costs
Hosting—generally an upfront cost. Cheap sites like Bluehost offer decent services for $5/mo. Upgraded services can be added later on such as SEO or web anonymity.
Domain name (optional)—Bluehost gives you one free domain name when you sign up, but you can also but one from places like Flippa.com or namecheap.com. With Flippa, you can actually buy existing faucets or sites that with lots of existing traffic, which you can then redirect to your site to get some of those views. This is generally expensive ($50 to start, sometimes thousands of dollars for sites with good reputations).
Funding—this is the main recurring cost you will encounter. You need to keep the faucet funded at all times because if it ever runs completely dry, you will lose many dedicated users.
Revenue Streams
Ad views/clicks—this is obvious, you make money from your ad provider proportional to the amount of traffic your site gets
Referrals—one additional feature of faucets is that you can add referrals so that users get a bonus (say 50% of satoshi rewards) from all additional users they invite. You will pay an additional referral cost, but it will be offset by the additional amount of traffic each pf these referrals gets you.
Tricks to increase revenue
Security measures—basic precautions like purchasing an SSL certificate ($25/month) help stop hackers. This gives your site the https:// instead of http:// in the URL and adds a layer of security.
Anti-bot scripts—these can be downloaded online from places like makejar.com/ It provides an additional easy puzzle for the client to solve. It will prevent basic bots from clicking through your site and draining your money faster than you make it.
Ads from a variety of providers—since I’ve heard Adsense by Google is cracking down on faucets. You can try alternative sources such as CoinAds.com, coinbucks.io, a-ads.com, and bitmedia.io. I have also heard that Google may not block your site if you make it more than just a faucet. For instance, if you already have a site generating traffic, or add additional pages to your site, it is less likely to be banned for simply being a faucet.
Captcha—I found out that you can have your Captcha serve as both a security measure and a source of income. SolveMedia provides a Captcha that is actually a company logo. It asks you to, say, describe the logo with 2 words. It then collects that data and sells it back to companies, paying you the process.
Faucet rotators—these are apparently huge to making money with your faucet. These are sites that already have tons of traffic, and are meant for faucet users to cycle through sites, earning a little bit of BTC as quickly as possible. A win for faucet owners and users. Some examples I’ve heard of are from Makejar.com or iFaucet.
Is it worth it?
I am currently in the process of making my own bitcoin faucet. I am fascinated by the idea and it seems like a fun side-project, but I want to know: is it still worth it? I have heard negativity from some but I remain optimistic that just because some sites aren’t making money from places like Adsense anymore, doesn’t mean there isn’t a way. Approaching things with an innovative approach is always important. So I want to hear from you. Leave a comment about any of the things I mentioned, such as:
- Is Adsense banning strictly faucet sites? How does this affect the faucet ecosystem?
- How much BTC funding is needed per month?
- Additional security measures?
- Tips and tricks for more pageviews?
- The best way to be included in a rotator? Best rotator?
- How to get referrals/dedicated users?
Let me know what you think!