Ever donated plasma for money?

Same here. I'm so scared of needles, it's ridiculous.

 

My cousin put himself through MIT and Med School doing these kind of experiments. He did just about every one he could qualify for. Only one came back to haunt him and he had to be hospitalized for a couple days, but he estimates he made over $150K doing it over a 10-year-span.

Being in Boston certainly didn't hurt.

 

And I'll search the world over ...

 

My town used to have a fairly large drug testing facility and the pay was really good but the people who did it, outside of a few college student types, were the saddest slice of humanity I have ever seen.

 

Eurotrash giiiirrrrllll
Eurotrash girl

 

I was going to do it in high school for prom, was there for a few hours then was not allowed due to a head injury I suffered as a child. It's kind of a downer to get turned down for plasma donation after seeing the people they do take.

 

A few times in college. The first time was the longest. I found that if I drank a LOT of water the night before, my sessions was shorter.

 

My wife was a nurse at one of these places. That first session is going to grind because you have to do a physical and a lot of different questionnaires and such to clear you through. After that it's pretty quick unless you bounce for another physical which comes every year. Certainly take a book or something. They have TVs playing movies, but they usually are not very good.

 

I donate twice a month at a nearby BioLife Plasma office, and it's pretty much as described above, except they don't have TVs. They do have wifi and a supervised childcare room, though.
You're allowed to donate twice in a seven-day period. Pay is $20 for the first donation and $30 for the second, with a rotation of incentives — an extra $10 for each second donation, extra money on the fifth and seventh donations in a month, drawings for prizes (Christmas drawings had everything from iPads to 32-inch flat screen TVs), etc.
The money gets downloaded to a pre-paid card.
The physical will last a couple hours or so, but the donation part goes pretty quickly. I've gone door to door in an hour, but it's usually about an hour and 15 minutes.

 

I did the BioLife thing a few years back when I was trying to be sly about raising some scratch to surprise my wife with an anniversary trip, and my experience was close to this. The physical visit was 2-3 hours, but I was never there more than 90 minutes for a regular donation.

Plus I liked that they had early (like 5 a.m.) appointments on several days, plus Saturday morning options. I'd go at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, then Saturday morning, and it was very convenient. Some of the techs were a little bit on the "butcher" side of things, but they were great about allowing donors to recommend a specific tech to stick them once you got back to the bed.

Also was great for new donors, with higher-than-usual pay for the first 4 or 6 visits before it slid back to the normal. I think at the site I went to, normal was $25/$35, and they also had specials when they were getting fewer donors than usual, going to $30/$40.

 

Once in college.
Took the pint, spun, took another pint and they came back and said the bag burst in the centrifuge and I'd have to stay there under supervision for another two hours... 20 minutes later, they brought the pint in and said "oops, it wasn't you."
Never again.