I gave early members free membership to my site if they completed certain beta-testing requirements. I think it was a net positive, though it's hard to measure

I gave early members free membership to my site if they completed certain beta-testing requirements. I think it was a net positive, though it's hard to measure. Statistically, these grandfathered members have outspent other members. However, it's hard to say whether or not they might have spent even more had they not been given free lifetime grandfathered access. A lot of these members have gone out of their way to buy perks for themselves and memberships for other members. I should mention my site was essentially a community site, so there was a strong connection with other members - they wanted their favorite members to remain on the site. Additionally these have been the most active members when it comes to referring new paying members to the site. To additionally complicate things, by giving grandfathered memberships to excellent community members, I think that these "anchors to the community" attract members in ways that would be completely impossible to quantify - I don't know how to measure the number of people that joined the site simply because they saw it did have a core of dedicated members. To sum it up, for a community-based site, grandfathered community members quite possibly do more than pay for their grandfathered membership status. I'm sure the returns are far less for other types of online businesses. You might join a community because you see that it has dedicated members, but I wouldn't necessarily be more likely to order a sweater from an online retailer because a bunch of people have grandfathered free shipping upgrades or something.