I signed up for a CCBill membership but now see people can register for free. So I guess CCBill was not popular?

You could always register for free.

Registering entitles you to upload videos, write comments where anonymous comments are banned, access the chat room, and register up to 10 favourites. This has always been the case.

Subscription (via CCbill), in addition to the above, allows you to view videos in full screen, make and watch playlists, do advanced searches (eg by country, length of video), get alerts, RSS feeds, and download selected videos (videos where the uploaded has not probited downloading). Bandwidth is also about to improve for subscribers.

People who upload good videos and achieve a yuvutu index equal or greater to 100,000 get subscription for free.