Welcome, Amy!
I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that there are costs associated with running a site like this. The amount of storage and bandwidth necessary to run the site is tremendous, and comes at a cost. In addition, the administrators have put literally thousands of hours of working into developing and maintaining the site, and deserve to be paid for their time as well (they need to eat and all that).
We offer lots of features to all Registered Users on the site. This includes the ability to enter either one of the Exclusive Open challenges (the ones marked with the grey user icon  ), and vote in both of them. Members who choose to pay the $5/month or $25/year get extra benefits, and one of those is the ability to enter and vote in the Member challenges noted with the blue  icon, in addition to either one of the Exclusive Open challenges.
If you choose to purchase a membership, you'll have access to these extra features as well. It's the administrators' way of saying thanks for helping to support the site financially. Either way, we currently don't time limit our free memberships. You're absolutely welcome to participate as a free Registered User for as long as you like.
~Terry
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), and vote in both of them. Members who choose to pay the $5/month or $25/year get extra benefits, and one of those is the ability to enter and vote in the Member challenges noted with the blue 
icon, in addition to either one of the Exclusive Open challenges.