New EC module in progress: Taxonomy_actions

Billing users to publish nodes

Howdy,
after puzzling with different possible solutions to get different levels of publishing for node listings (a la Silver, Gold, Platinum) - see eventually pay 2 publish post here (note: i posted this thread also there for more visibility) - i am working on a new module that aims at providing a solution.

Scope
(well, actually work-in-progress!) the idea is to let users publish basic version of nodes for free, and later be able to pay to "upgrade" it and show more information (more fields outputted to the final node) and add more visibility (views plays here).
This should incentivate new users to go for a free publication at first, letting them explore the ground first, and helping new sites collecting content.

Taxonomy_actions:
I asked a coder to develop a module that aims at what i tryed to explain above, based on E-commerce obviously, on Taxonomy (Category) and Actions. The module will be called Taxonomy_actions, and the idea behind it is:

• set up different "Levels" with different costs and properties (Silver, Gold, Platinum style). Each level will have it's corresponding taxonomy (category) term.
• to upgrade a node, the user will have to buy the desired "Level" and assign it to one of his published nodes. The corresponding taxonomy term will be assigned to the desired node.
• user will also be able to choose a duration in months. The final price will be a combination of Level x Number of months.

Once done that:

• a conditional can be used in the template of the content-type to show more or less text-fields or whatever fields (show additional information) depending on the level they bought.
• Views will play the role of showing higher-level listings in specific pages and blocks views in the site (more visibility).

Possible questions:

Q: Why not use role memberships to define different roles for publishers?
A: Tryed this in the early day, but this way is not possible to differentiate levels on a per-node level. All nodes published by a user asssume the properties of the role he buys. No good.

Q: Why not just add a price to publish a node type?
A: This way users have to pay a fixed price for each node they wish to publish. This is very straightforward and effective, but also can be a stop for some users who would like to get familiar with the site before actually paying for publishing.

Q: And why not have a node-type per level instead of taxonomy levels?
A: True, different per-level content-types each with additional information fields could be setted up, but in this case issues would arise when a user decides to upgrade/downgrade a node listing (he should copy the information into the new node and delete old one).

I am following the developement of the module in these days. If interested please drop comments, hints, suggestions or critics below here!

cheers
-Marco