I haven't participated in airdrops for a long time because I'm busy and I feel like it's not good enough anymore because it requires a lot of work for little profit and some of it is worthless.
I don't think airdrops need that much time and they give less profit, I will agree with you if you say, all don't airdrops don't give profits, some waste our time and money but saying we work for little profit isn't that true, I don't know in which country you live and what's the dollar rate there, but in my country, where dollar rate is higher, people make good profit, good enough to make there lives a little easy, I have seen people making thousands of dollars only from airdrops, let me talk about myself, I started to join airdrop from December of 2023, and till now I have joined around 130+ airdrops, only few of them are the ones on which I spent money and except them every other airdrops was free. I didn't made that much money because I know airdrops don't give instant money. So, I will conclude the result at the end of the year. But talking about these 2 months, I was able to make $150 from those airdrops (around 4 to 5 made me that money).
Airdrops for new networks and Layer-2 solutions (such as ARB and OP) look a little different. It is true that they require some fees and completing some transactions on the network, but in general, participants get a good return, so there is no harm in wasting some fees trying to get a good opportunity.
I also joined OP airdrop last time, wasted good money on it and only got around 5 or 7 tokens of it, as I did not spend that much money but it was good for me

(the money) I suggest you to check the current airdrops, you will find them profitable, but DYOR.