Airdrops are harder for beginners to be a part of because they require you to own another cryptocurrency first. Most (if not all) airdrops occur by way of a hard fork attempt. In those scenarios you need to to have money to make money because you need to own the cryptocurrency that's being targeted for the hard fork to participate in the airdrop.
You don't always need to have coins to participate in Airdrops, and I've actually participated in plenty of airdrops that only required you to make a registration in the airdrop, by providing your ether address. Some coins ended up with no value, bu others were quite good, and I still hold some, because they I believe those particular projects have potencial to grow further.
Sorry, sir, you are wrong.
Officially, "Airdrop" is the term used for the distribution of coins by way of hard fork. Most people misuse the term, particularly cryptocurrency/token developers issuing bounty campaigns and/or giveaways to generate hype about their ICO.
"Airdrop" sounds sexy, which is why it's being misused. And then Newbies like you take the misuse of that term and spread it around as fact. It's not your fault, I guess, it's the fault of the ICO developers that are misusing the term.
Here's a source to educate all of you:
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@bitcoinflood/icos-are-out-airdrops-are-inAnd I'll quote one of the first sentences from my source:
A airdrop you might know better as a hard fork.