Earlier this week I mentioned Paypal and offered a couple of ideas that email publishers might use to receive micro payments for their content. If you missed the Paypal article, you can read it here while the first part of today's article is located here .
Users then buy reprints of the information they choose via credit card.
The advantages to the reader are that they only pay for what they use, while publishers can track what content sells and better tailor the site to user needs. In addition, there's some evidence that readers are more inclined to purchase when they have a good idea of what content they are getting and the price to get it is relatively inexpensive. Northern Light's Special Collection runs this way. The Electric Library also runs similarly by providing a searchable database of selected documents, but it charges a flat rate for unlimited access. Non-members would be able to search for free but would have to pay a fee to see full text results.