Would it be possible to have members pay to access specific threads ?

[PlymWS]

Before I commit to buying a vB licence I need some info on a couple of hacks that I would want to implement.

I have been tasked to setup a free community message board. The discussion / chat forums will be free to all users however, in order to generate income to cover server costs, I will require some sort of hack to allow users to pay for certain parts of the site.

Ideally there would be a forum in which users can post attachments. Should another user want the attachment, they would pay the price set by the poster. Then a proportion of the sale price, say 25% would goto a site account and the rest would be given to the original poster.

I would prefer not to use Paypal because of the handling charge of 3% however if this can not be avoided, so be it.

In short I would need the following :

• Users able to post attachments and specify sale price.
• Users who haven't paid for the attachment would only see a message suggesting that they need to pay to download the attachment.
• Billing hack to enable users to pay for access to the attachment.

Obviously I would need all of the billing / subscription side of things to be automated and if possible, a box in the users public profile would show which attachments they have paid to view.

If anyone can recommend a hack that would enable all of this, I would be very greatful.