Speaking as the guy whose main job is to ensure that my, Matt's, and Dave's passionate hobby is also a viable business, I can categorically state that we don't consider free members to be "freeloaders".
Not unless they make a lot of work for us. :)
I should point out, though, that I've done considerable analysis regarding free vs paid membership and the following things are true:
1. Our ad revenues are just over half of our total income.
2. Free members outnumber paying members by about 3 to 1.
3. From solely the perspective of the bank account, the averaging paying member contributes about 35 cents per day to the coffers. The average free member (through ad views), about 4 cents. That number really is a little tough to pin down, though. That's just based on a free member's pageviews. When a free member writes a lot of good posts and they get read a lot by other free members, more ad revenue. And more people buying subscriptions so they can more easily read a lot of posts.
Bottom line is that ponying up for a subscription, contributing content for others to read, and/or seeing and actually paying attention to ads and clicking ones that look like they're worthwhile, it's all money in the bank, and it's all good.
