I am trying to encourage members to donate by purchasing a member sponsorship for $5/month. It entitles the member to a bunch of nifty features IMO such as access to a behind the scenes forum and a sponsor badge.

It seems that the tried and true method to get donations is to offer an advertising-free site to them. Is that really the ONLY way to go?

You can see on a different thread, that i think you posted in that many of us look at an advertisement free internet thanks to adblock with ff. Knowing this community they are all very clever so I don't think they will fall for that one. Maybe something like an advertisement of their own website on the forum. Just an idea. Or maybe access to a special chat service...

It does help to pitch the sponsorship part to them if they get to browse the site ad-free. I offer this to my members.

The big thing is to offer something that members would not find for free on another site. I recently removed all but a small ad area on the front page of my forum for all members. Traffic not being that big the site was not winning any awards on money generation

I have seen the sponsor badge on some sites as well as the ability to change their forum title. If you are generating some cash from ads, or have a lot of ads, then you can try the non-ad route that comes with a paid membership. Maybe even throw in an email address if your hosting company provide you will free email accounts for your domain.

ive been meaning to become a sponsor but have no money
sorry guys i have been trying to get a job...

I would become a sponsor too but I will be honest now:

I don't have money to through away so it is hard for me to justify spending money on something that gets me very little extra than I am now. However, I do understand it is hard to think of these things and I know that this site is definately a worthy cause so maybe in a few years time when I might have a bit more cash.

I don't know if this is related but there's an add-on for FF which allows customizing the site look-n-feel. It can be easily used to create a custom browsing profile and block ads from a site.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2108/

I already mentioned that so please read the full thread before posting. But yes it is a very useful tool and is actually one of the reasons i wouldn't become a sponsor if it was just ad free.

I read your full post and I mentioned that one because you could change the whole look and feel of a site; not just removing the ads. It's much more handy and fun to play with. Some of the forums do need better colors.

The advertisements dont really bother me. I would become a sponsor but like most have said. we are all broke because we are too busy buying gadgets