Writing puts seems like a free money, if you think about it as possibly owning your favorite stock at a discount in worst case scenario.

Problem with this is that sometimes the price might dip for irrational reasons(let's call it technical reasons), which is the good scenario.

However, sometimes price might dip because of fundamental reasons(let's say company announces that their CFO has misstated results for last 5 quarters).

Even worse is writing Covered Calls without any thought. There was that guy on Reddit who sold Covered Calls on his McDonalds stock. It worked great for a few months, collecting premiums while the stock stayed stagnant. Then the stock dipped in such a way that writing Covered Calls at the original strike price was not really worth it anymore, while writing at a lower price than purchase price was even worse. The protective puts(which he did not have) would not have been triggered either as the dip was not low enough.

So again, there is no free lunch.