Paid Surveys?

Can you really get paid to take a survey? I'm skeptical, to say the least. Like the "get paid to surf the web" phenom back in the boom, paid surveys have generated a great deal of attention among the wanna work at home crowd. Attention is one thing, but real revenues just might be something else. Is it really possible to get paid up to $150 an hour simply for taking surveys?

I've been looking at one paid survey website after another, and something just seems amiss.

A great many paid survey sites make positively outrageous claims, promising bounties of up to $250 for participating in focus groups or $100 for phone surveys. They even crow that you can get paid to read email and to drive a car.

Could it really be true?

There's one thread that runs through all of the paid survey sites--at least all of the paid survey sites that I've visited. They all seem to ask for a "membership fee"between $25 and $40 dollars.

Seeing that made the alarm bells go off in my head (nothing new there).

I'm eager to do the research on this field, but quite honestly, I'm wary of the claims. Should I quit being a skinflint, pony up the thirty-five bucks to one of the paid survey websites and get on with it?

Here's where the power of the 'Gnome kicks in ... with all the scores of loyal Gnomies out there, no doubt there are some paid survey experiences. If you'd like to share those experiences (whether anonymously or not), please feel free to ping me through the feedback link.