Interesting. It's one of those questions that everyone will answer slightly differently, so in other words you may as well do your own thing. ;)

There's always a cost to a freebie maker, although it can sometimes be well hidden. In your case, it's the lost time that could have been spent making something new to sell, assuming that new stuff is attractive in sales terms. On the other hand, freebies drive more traffic to your site and presumably help your search engine ranking, which might increase your revenue slightly, but I'm guessing that new, shiny items are better for your bottom line than attracting new eyes to old stuff.

Financially speaking I don't really care whether people come to my site or not, since I won't make any money from them. Fortunately it isn't about finance. :) In my case, the actual cost is purely down to philanthropy on my part: I choose to maintain a professionally hosted website because it inflates my ego. Maybe I'll live longer as a result. :D

Quote - As for the paypal link thing, I've had one on my old website for years now and have gotten a total of no donations. LOL I think it's pretty much a waste of time.

Same here - I had a donate button at Morphography for some time, but I never got even a wooden nickel from it so I cleaned up the site design by getting rid of it. Once or twice a year someone will click through my Renderosity affiliate link to buy something, and I get a little bonus. DAZ have changed their affiliate scheme, and a third site's affiliate link never made me a cent, so I've dropped both those.