I saw a bit about this on the news last night as well as getting an email from Marketing Sherpa (a great resource!) referring to it.

Apparently, AOL and Yahoo are thinking about charging for guaranteed delivery of email. Email that pays for delivery would bypass spam filters and no need to be whitelisted.

Details on this are not very clear yet, but if this becomes popular it could really add to the costs of email marketing. They’re talking $2.50-10 per 1000 emails.

I agree with the folks at Marketing Sherpa - RSS looks better all the time! It sounds like the charge at this point is only to guarantee delivery and that you could still take your chances without paying, but I wouldn’t bet on that lasting. Once businesses see a way to earn more money they’re likely to want to continue. I don’t know exactly how it would work, since I don’t think regular consumers would accept being charged to email their friends, but you never know.

This is one of those trends to keep an eye on!