Digital items may be referred, lent, or resold via a computing architecture that supports a secondary market for such items, as well as the economic models to support the secondary market. In one scenario, a lender may lend a digital item to another person, and if that person purchases the digital item following a trial period, the lender is given a referral fee. In another scenario, rights holders of one digital item are paid a referral fee for any sales of other digital items that arise due to purchasers acting on a reference contained in the digital item.