Don't really need luck but contribute to their project.
However, there's something that these kind of article didn't disclose. It's the capital needed to follow an airdrop.
The recent airdrop like treehouse, huma, etc requires you to stake your capital and to get good enough money. Usually at minimum you need 10k USD or something to get 1k - 2k reward.
If you're doing testnet however, consider it already botted that you're more likely to get $5 out of it. In some case you can get really good airdrop like walrus, but that kind of thing comes once in a while.
1k return on 10 k investment in few months is not bad at all. You are getting much more to what you will get if the money was kept in bank account.
It is a very bad return. They are not risk free returns. If you have to use their token that is very risky itself, using their platforms has additional risk and so on. You just need 1 hack and all your work and capital is gone.