Self-signed certs are much harder to get browsers to accept these days. The "I know what I'm doing" button and process are becoming ever more complex, and I wouldn't be surprised if they just start going away in favor of a list of trusted root CAs, which you may or may not be able to control as a user, depending on your browser. Which sucks. But anyway.
StartSSL is one place where you can get a free cert for your website today (and yes, they charge for revocation, but revocation is pretty ineffective anyway). I got a free cert from them, but my mobile browser doesn't trust it, so I decided to shell out $10 for a cert that's more widely auto-trusted by browsers. Not a huge cost, IMO.
Who knows. Maybe that arrangement could even spur a sorely needed push for a free certificate trust network and get rid of CA's entirely.