For sites like Amazon it’s been a long time since they have had their Amazon Prime membership fee in place that enables things such as access to sales early or even getting free shipping faster without he need to purchase a minimum amount. Now for them they offer a lot ore as well and are one of the biggest companies which means they have a bigger value proposition for people to buy a membership fee.
But for this one site I saw they were selling membership plans too with a similar concept on how buying it will open more deals for you. But the issue in this case I thought was since this site was way smaller and didn’t exactly have astronomical deals the membership fee actually turned me off from wanting to buy front them. The simple reason is if I am going to buy a yearly membership then I better be using it often. Otherwise, it’s like the bad habit of people buying gym membership fees and never actually using them after the one month.
AS a business too I think that shows you really need to be at a proper point in your growth to offer stuff like this which clearly separates your potential customer base. If there was an overwhelming amount of offers for the non-paying members where the premium plan is more of a “nice to have” then that could would better than making people feel like you are getting ripped off by purchasing the item as a non-member.