We use subscriptions and currently charge £5 a month although we're looking at reducing that. For that they get:

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/faq.php?faq=marx#faq_s2

We're going to add the ability to post [img] code to that later today hopefully.

I guess it depends on your forum. We have had absolutely no luck with donations/subscriptions. The members are all for it but when it comes to actually paying up, no one will. :(

Well it really depends on what you can offer your members, If it's something that benifits them over a regular member then they don't mind paying a subscription. Monthly is not what most members will go for. When I first started private forums for paid members I did yearly subscriptions and that worked really well.

I haven't used them yet. We had a system developed on one of my boards some years ago, that was a lot like the current subscription feature in vBulletin 3.x. I just didn't have enough content offered that was worth paying for, on the forums. I think the idea would be heavily effective, for example, if you ran a general video game strategies website and forum. You could create a new post system (like the vB.org hack/thread post), for details and game strategy, so your users could post them up. Then by adding a subscription feature to the forum, you could make money off of your users who visit and use those posted strategies. My content wasn't close enough to something as effective as that.

On my first board I don't use them, but on my newest board I plan to have a "Premium Membership" feature where users who pay get more options/features. I was thinking something about $5 per 30 days or something along those lines. I don't know yet though, I have to think about it a bit more. I love the subscription system though.

Yes I use them to allow members to purchase a Premium Member package on both of my sites.

Actually I don't use it, but some members of my forum got some interest on knowing how and where from came all the money I've invested in the past 16 months and some got some interest on helping a little to fund some expenses.

Lately I got a pair of brand new machines and now are hosted at COLT facilities (at 160Euro/month). Some guys started to send some money for making it more easy for my pocket.

Basically I don't have anything to give them as 'extra', I have a gallery who can be used all the members with more than 30 days of registration, and is a regular member.

They have space for 10megs on msg attachments, 15 megs on the gallery, 60PM's on their box... basically gave them all what can desire on a forum. The only I can give them, that actually I don't offer is some kind of webspace in the form of subdomain of my forum with access to a MySQL db.

That all sounds very generous of your Alfonso. If I could speak/read Spanish I would join your community as I am a passionate photographer. :D

It is always tough when galleries are provided. If you just run a plain text forum (with a couple of avatars etc) then the space/bandwidth issues usually aren't too bad (unless you have thousands of members posting a lot). But once photo galleries get involved then it is a very different ball game.

Best of luck with your forum.

I don't because my site is a support group. Had it hosted on a free forum before and see no reason to start charging now.