Just for note google used to pay 1-3 cents per a search sent its way from any site (I used a homestead page) to get me $300-500 checks /mo during highschool.
Surely paying your users isn't the answer - for starters it's almost an admission it doens't stack up to the competition on it's own! It's also only going to insentivise a small group of users that are very likely to dump the product as soon as the payments stop. They've got to stop looking for gimicks and compete on product.