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Gary Ho knows that for busy Hong Kong residents, time is money. That is why the 24-year-old former soap marketer wants to pay you . . . if you surf his Web site.

 Not big money, mind you. Mr Ho's company, AdsHouse.com, will pay registered members a maximum of $1.10 every time they check out an ad on its soon-to-launch Web site.

 Signing up friends and family will garner up to $1 a head, which includes indirect referrals - members signed up by friends and family.

 'We don't expect people to quit their jobs,' he joked.

 Mr Ho says that members who have signed up since the site's soft launch last month are already accruing money for which they can receive their first cheques in late February.

 AdsHouse.com is no charity. It is part of a larger wave of companies taking a hodgepodge of marketing techniques - combining legitimate direct-marketing tactics with less well-regarded Amway-type and pyramid marketing schemes - and reinventing them for the Net.

 The most ambitious experiment in this line was the now-defunct Free-PC, a US company, which offered a free computer to users in exchange for which people agreed to view Web advertising.

 More common are firms such as Beenz and HelloAsia.com, which offer points to Web surfers for viewing Web pages or buying products from their corporate partners. These points can later be redeemed for gifts or discounts.

 But a growing number of companies in the United States, with names such as AllAdvantage.com, Utopiad.com and ePIPO.com, are promising to deliver cash in exchange for users' eyeballs.

 In turn, they are paid by advertisers and sponsors for cutting up their database of profiled members and delivering ads to the targeted slices.

 Less than two months ago, Mr Ho left a job at Procter & Gamble, where he marketed products such as Zest shower gel and Tempo tissue paper, to start AdsHouse.com with a partner.

 An avid Web user, Mr Ho saw that marketers such as himself were hesitant about advertising on the Web, with good reason.

 'People have been trained to ignore advertising,' he says.

 A typical urban resident is exposed to more than 3,000 advertisements a day, he claims, everything from product logos to MTR billboards to the buses and trams that pass by.

 That means that in today's ad-saturated environment, Web ads - even the new wave of 'rich media' banners that feature throbbing graphics and blaring music - have a difficult time competing for people's attention, much less advertisers' budgets.

 As the novelty of the Web has lessened, the percentage of people who actually click on a banner ad - after all, the only sure-fire way of knowing that someone has actually looked at an ad - has dropped to less than one, according to surveys.

 Mr Ho thinks the solution involves more than just the better targeting that the Web allows.

 He plans to help sponsors create special ads expressly for the AdsHouse.com site, which he claims will be more interactive than a typical banner ad.

 While declining to release details for competitive reasons, Mr Ho says the ads will force users to actually interact with the ad for a few seconds to earn their dollar.

 Because these ads will require more from users than a simple click, they will be impervious to 'bots' software, which can automatically visit Web pages and click on ads and has been used by unscrupulous Webmasters to artificially boost either the number of page views or click-throughs.

 AdsHouse.com sponsors would pay $3,000 to 5,000 per week, a flat fee which Mr Ho says will not be raised even if thousands of people view the ad, forcing AdsHouse to hand out thousands of dollars.

 AdsHouse.com has no sponsors yet, but Mr Ho is not worried, saying that he has budgeted his startup - so far funded by himself and a partner - carefully.

 For instance, AdsHouse.com's five employees and computer servers are located in a tiny, bare-bones office in Sheung Wan which the company shares with another startup.

 In the meantime, AdsHouse.com is building up a database of registered users - the number of which he declined to release - and finalising the design of the Web site, which he says will eventually boast content such as news, weather and chat rooms, just as do other fully fledged Web portals.

 'Our Web site won't have banners stacked up and down on top of each other,' he said.

 Mr Ho admits that compared to some US sites, surfing AdsHouse.com will not be that lucrative.

 Utopiad.com, for instance, claims that it will pay its members up to US$10 an hour to view Web ads.

 AdsHouse.com members will probably be barred from viewing the same ad more than once a day.

 For legal reasons, AdsHouse.com accepts only members with a permanent address in Hong Kong, meaning that there is no reason to invite your overseas friends to join.

 Finally, conscious of the poor reputation that multi-level marketing schemes have in the off-line world, Mr Ho says that the site will strictly enforce an anti-spam policy.

 If AdsHouse.com receives a complaint of a member sending out mass e-mails inviting people to join AdsHouse.com, it will cancel that user's account and donate the money to a charity.



Proposed site willing to pay surfers who check out its ads