Didn't have premium for the first couple of years I used Alla. Then I got much richer and subscribed. I've paid yearly for a few years and bought a couple of gift subscriptions. The premium costs are massive value for money for me firstly because I use the site so much for MMO information. Those games would be impossible to play without a fansite encyclopedia like this, unless you bugged your LS/Guild/Kinship/general chat/trade chat every 10 minutes for information.
Secondly I got sucked onto the social pages of the OOT and Asylum, and they've helped keep me from going nuts from being mostly homebound. Also, believe it or not, they're a semi-decent pain killer a lot of the time. I like the Free/Premium structure. I think it would be very detrimental to charge everyone who wants to use this place.
I think there's possibly also room to have a second tier of paid membership, for those of us who realise just how much they use this place, and just how much they're not spending on books or movies or other things because of their combined MMO-Allakhazam addiction. I think that I would want that second tier to come without crappy mugs or t-shirts or other extraneous junk that comes as a bulk lot with the membership. If I'm going to buy merchendise, I want to pay separately for it, because the mechendise ITSELF is attractive.