well, why is the site so slow, are you maxing out the processor just generating the pages (I dont know what content management system or scripts the site is running on each page load) or is it that the pages are too large and take too much bandwidth? Or is it just too many people at once.

Perhaps a temporary solution would be to make a plain website with few images for guests or anyone that elects for that, I would gladly lower my footprint on the website.

Thirdly... Why not put up some google ads? You get a lot of hits, you could probably pay for some of the site that way/