How to Earn More Money - Donating Plasma

Introduction

Hello Everyone! Before I get to today’s main way to earn more money, donating plasma, I wanted to introduce myself. As a lot of you already know from Andrew’s introduction of me from his post last week, I am Adam. If you didn’t see his introduction, go check it out now. It is a really good read! Don’t worry, I won’t go anywhere, I’ll still be here when you get back.

You back? Great! I hope you enjoyed that article as much as I did.

Anyways, back to what is important, me! As I’ve already mentioned, I am Adam, the newest and greatest (shhh don’t tell Andrew) contributor to Wallet Squirrel. I am very excited to work alongside my best buddy Andrew making great content for you while learning in the process.

My goals here are to learn more about becoming financially free and to become that. My wife and I have a lot of debt (car, student loans, and house) that we want to break free from. I want to include you in on this journey to paying off our debt!

A little about me. I am married and we have a four month old. We also have two dogs, a lab-retriever and a husky. Living in Denver, Colorado allows our little family to do what we love the most, spend time in the mountains. We love to hike, climb 14ers (Mountains above 14,000 feet in elevation), and to camp. One of my favorite hobbies is photography so you will be seeing several posts from me about it and how you can make money with your camera. Be excited!

A little self promotion of one of my photographs

I guess I’ll stop rambling and get to what you are really here for. Way #72 to earn more money by donating plasma.

Earn More Money – Donating Plasma

A lot of people cringe at the thought of having a 12 gauge needle moving towards their arm. I don’t blame them, it can be a very nerve racking process. Especially when a trainee would come to stick you but most weeks the experience was great. I am here to walk you through the donation process to help ease those nerves.

Back in college donating plasma was my main income for a few years. Twice a week one of my roommates and I would go to Biolife Plasma in Ames, Iowa to donate plasma. Typically we would earn between $50 to $70 a week for our plasma and time.

So let’s walk through what my typical visit was like. Keep in mind, I have experience with only one facility and your local donation center might vary.

When I initially started I had to take a physical to make sure I was fit enough to donate. This is not a traditional physical that you get at the doctor, so do not worry about that. It takes about an hour to complete between all of the paper work, the million and one questions they ask you, as well as the general physical health checkup they perform. The physical needs to be repeated every year, which was my least favorite part of the experience. Not because it was hard or anything like that, it was just really annoying.

Now that the initial physical is complete and I was approved the rest of the visits were easy. I would walk through the front door and sign in at the front desk. This included answering a bunch of questions on a computer. Some examples are. Have you visited certain countries within a particular time frame? Were you sick recently? Did you donated blood recently? Then I would go sit in the waiting room for a little bit. A nurse would call my name to check my temperature, blood pressure, and verify so other items. If I had too high of temperature or blood pressure I could not donate for the day. If I passed, the nurse would take me back to the donating beds.

Once back there and settled in, a technician would come to stick my arm so the donation process could start. This is the part most people cringe about, don’t worry about it. These technician do go through a thorough training process. Out of the three years I donated, only a few sticks did not go too well.

Technically this photo is of someone donating blood but looks very similar to the plasma donation process.

After getting hooked up I was able to relax during the donation process for the next thirty to forty-five minutes. This is when I would read/study or watch a movie. I really enjoyed this part of the donation process as you were literally forced to relax. When done and unhooked, I went to check out, sign up for my next donation time, and get paid! The whole visit took about an hour and a half.

Payment wise, Ames was a smaller market so we only got $50 to $70 a week for the donations. We were limited to two donations a week each time. They would pay $30 for the first time and $40 for the second visit. Some bigger cities paid a lot better. It was rumored that people in Kansas City were getting $130 a week!

Conclusion

For anyone with a few extra hours in the week and looking for more money I highly recommend checking your local plasma donation center. This is a fairly easy way to gain some extra income. It is mostly a painless process that allows you to get other work done during the process. If I missed anything about the process or you have a story about your own experience, give a comment below.

Now that you know a little more about way #72 to earn more money, donating plasma. Head over to our comprehensive list to check out other ways you could earn more money in 2017! We will continue to try out and review these ways throughout the year for you. If we are missing something on the list and you want to see us review it shoot us an email or tweet (@WalletSquirrel)!

Cheers!
-Adam