I've tried Adsense, but no one really clicks on ads. I've moved to Cubics. I can say that they pay really low, but they DO pay! I gave Google a try... gave up on it after i had 5000 views and no $. With Cubics you are receiving CPM ads, but they can drop down to 0.02 sometimes! But the highest i've had was like 1.18
Donations are where I get most of my revenue from. But, I use the money to improve the forum for the members, I would never use it for myself.
My site runs purely off of donations. The donations are not used to pay anyone who mods/admins the site, they are used solely for site costs (server costs, vb license, domains, etc.).