Trivial Internet Payments

I want to be able to pay for simple services on The Internets, say running a few searches on a subscription site, without having to shell out for their full subscription service. Earlier today I wanted to look up some restaurants in Zagat’s guide which, like everything these days, has interweb-searchability but, because they are a commercial entity, using said service requires having a subscription. This is something where, right now at least, I don’t want to sign up to use it for a month as I only want to run a couple of searches and paying $20 to use it for a day is a waste. There should be some system by which I can pay per search or buy a short time period to access the site, worth less than a dollar.

Such payments, which are trivial to consumers who would barely think twice about paying for services all over the web once setup with the service, could net business like Zagat’s online arm or Consumer Reports online searching functionality a significant amount of money. There must be other people out there who have wanted to use a service for a short period, but don’t care enough to sign up for a full subscription.