Airdrops as we know doesn't give you what you expected at all times and I must say that to benefit from airdrops you must be selective about the kind of airdrops you picked, usually if you start involving your self with airdrop there are all chances that your expectations wouldn't be met, therefore if you join airdrop it's either you hold the rewards or you join crowd to push out the little you are holding.
Must be selective when joining any airdrop to earn benefit later, if won't get disappointed better filter before joining airdrop from how much reward allocated, how many participants joining until how long airdrop take time for announcing their tokenomic releasing.
Most important with popular airdrop right now many telegram airdrop require purchasing if want get eligible coins, if you won't spent capital or purchasing amount make transaction better keep away awhile from telegram airdrop who require need to make transaction.
For token purchase before joining airdrops I won't encourage that because some of this people, I mean projects owners uses that methods to sell of their shitcoin to people around or to those who are age to join their airdrops with fake promise of listing in a good exchange with high price. So to me I give way to those airdrop because I can't accept to risk my money when I don't know the future of that project, and if you buy there is likelihood that it would dump on you entirely.
In my opinion, the risk is quite high buying tokens from projects whose airdrops are still ongoing, because we don't know the future of the project. It's better to buy coins that have a good reputation, if I prefer to spend capital to buy top coins like ethereum, BNB, Solana.
why do we take the risk of buying tokens, but if you do have the knowledge and experience in conducting research on new projects, that's another story. Unfortunately I don't have any experience there.