Hi @chekohler,
Since I was among the first ones providing faucets, it was quite lucrative because at the time, I even had Google adsense to finance my faucets. One day all faucet owners got kicked out and since then it became more and more difficult to break even. In the last two years, many users have turned to bots to claim from faucets which makes it almost impossible to cover the costs.
The business concept is quite simple. You offer a small amount in coins to the users and you put ads and links on your website. If you calculate well, you will earn more from the clicks and views of these ads than you pay to the users. But this doesn't work with automated claims from bots because they don't click anything ;-). I more or less gave up this business because it was a tiresome fight banning IP's and putting in many safeguards so that bots couldn't empty your balance over night.