Hi all,
I've chipped in $50 over paypal, hope it helps.... I reckon your best bet would be a subscription option...
If you've got 7000 active users and you need ~$500 a month, if you even got $1 a year from each of the active users you'd be cool.... Although I reckon you'd be better placing it more at $10 a year and shoot for 600 subs
Also personally, I'm not bothered by the google text ads (I even click on them sometimes, 'cause they're usually fairly relevant to the site they're on...), although I don't know how much you make from them... and if you're thinking about a shop typed option then
www.cafepress.com seem popular for that kind of thing, indeed there are already ~250 gaming communities selling stuff there.....
cheers
Rory