Donating Plasma for Fun and Profit
I’ve mentioned before that my husband’s friend makes extra money donating plasma. Well, he was over Friday night for the NCAA tournament, and the topic somehow came up again (could be that $20 referral bonus).
There’s a donation center near our house that pays $20 per donation, or $40 if it’s your second donation that week. So, if my husband and I were each to donate twice per week, that would be $480 per month. Sweet!
However, I’m still not convinced I’m going to try it. I’ve never even given blood because I have a severe phobia of needles (just typing that made me shudder). I’ve nearly passed out from vaccinations, and my ambitions of becoming a veterinarian ended when I shadowed a vet for a day in eighth grade.
Am I being a total wuss? Has anyone else donated plasma before?
Photo Credit: 515 Grams of My Plasma by reinvented, used under Creative Commons licensing
6 responses so far
i don’t do it because of a wuss factor (i donate platelets through apheresis, so yeah…) or just because of the recent (and oft, lately) tattooing (though that means a year between blood donations), but because, even though i want to find new ways to make money, i still feel like blood/plasma are these, i dunno, rights. i just feel like i’m required to give them to the red cross for free. my grandfather was like a blood-giving enthusiast and had all of these placques - displayed more prominently than his war mementos - commemorating how much blood he’d given, so i think that’s part of it, and i had a transfusion after an accident as a kid. i know it would be an easy way to get some money, but i still feel like it’s not something i can use as a commodity… makes me feel icky for some reason! not to put words in your mouth, but maybe that’s where some hesitation for you comes from?
I don’t know. I mean, if paying people helps get more donations, then it’s all for the greater good, right? Still, I feel kind of guilty that that’s my motivation for doing it. It also kind of reeks of desperation - like I’m so desperate for money that I’ll sell my own blood/plasma. I mean, what’s next - selling my eggs to infertile couples and my hair to wig companies? (side note: I read someone else’s post about selling your hair to wig companies for hundreds of bucks, but I think that’s kind of wrong when you can donate it to charities that make wigs for people with cancer - so I guess it’s kind of the same logic).
My husband’s friend says it’s rare to find a place that pays you for donating plasma (don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what he said). He’s in the military, and I guess they encourage them to do it.
I felt really good about signing up for the bone marrow registry, and I’d think that giving blood/plasma would give you the same feeling, once you get over the wuss factor. Maybe I will give blood sometime and see what that’s like first.
I used to donate plasma (when I was drowning in debt.) It was while I was in college and my boyfriend and I would go twice a week.
Ours paid $15 each time so we got less money. I have small veins and it was a challenge for them to get the needle in. In fact there were only two people who could get me and if they were not at work then NO ONE could touch me.
I got over the ick factor quickly because I was desperate for money and that $100 to $120 a month REALLY helped.
We would drink gatorade before we went in to the place and then drink tons of juice when we got back. I only stopped when I had been doing it for about 5 months straight and one time I started to feel sick after and almost passed out. Then I took a break…and started up about 5 months later for another 5 months straight.
Wow, lulugal, sounds intense!
Did you ever get bruises on your arm from it? When I was searching flickr for “plasma donation,” it brought up all these pictures of people with huge bruises on their arms. That was kind of discouraging, esp. since I’m a pasty white girl who bruises easily.
hah! i’m with you FG - pasty white bruisable peach. crazy! i’m on the marrow donor registry, too… i feel sort of weirdly excited that my body can be helpful to someone else (and not in that dirty way… though that’s good, too). well, either way, i hope you report on what you decide to do and how it goes! i love that you update your blog so often - it helps keep me motivated when i feel like debt reduction/net worth raising is such a sluggish, boring business!
I donated plasma for a short time back in college. I would receive $20 for the first time and $30 for the second in a week’s time. We could only donate twice a week, and we had to have at least two days in between donations.
I never had a problem with it. Once I was turned away because my iron count was just barely too low; they test your iron before each donation. Once the needle is in, you don’t really feel it. It varies for each person how long it takes–for me, it took around 45 minutes, I think, from needle in to needle out. I didn’t have any bruising, but a pale, bruisable pal of mine did her first time there; she decided not to go back.
It was definitely worth it to me, but I’m not afraid of needles. I don’t like them at all, but they didn’t bother me enough to stop. In fact, I recently searched online to find somewhere in the Northern VA area where I could get paid for donating, but I couldn’t find anything. I’d love to do it again.