Again, what Sparkle says.
Sparkle speaks for me (when she yells "more rum")
If you pay for "special items" then it's a designer saying.."this is free...but what I actually worked hard on...ummm...pay me for my hobby time"
And "life-time" membership (on many sites) is a few months...sometimes longer, but there is no guarentee.
Again, I did this before I knew about the paysite thing. Since it's a lifetime membership, I can't go and cancel it, nor would I want to, because it's only 3$ and I get it forever. Like liegen said, this goes back as far as her Sims1 site (which is also very HQ considering it's TS1!) which was like three years ago.
I agree that there is a difference between someplace like Peggy and a place like ATS. Peggy charges ridiculously high fees for stuff that is ugly, gappy, and crappily animated. At a place like ATS, you can download 25 pieces out of a great, highly-detailed, often multi-recolored set that's 28 pieces for free. If you want three additional items for that set, as well as ALL of the extras on the site and the ability to download entire sets in one zip (which is very useful because she has so many fucking recolors of every object that you'd be clicking and unzipping 80times for one bedroom set) for 3$ and you only have to pay once for everything...
The three pieces are still pay, but considering you get everything else along with it, I don't feel like such a huge sucker paying the 3$ than I would for paying double for a shitty Rose hair.