Money Making Tip of the Day: Sell Blood Plasma

If you can't stand needles, read no further. If you can indeed stand having the sharp little buggers be stabbed into you, read on. One of the fastest and easiest ways I have ever made money is by donating blood plasma. What's that, you ask? Plasma is part of your blood that can be separated out via a centrifuge. It is mostly made of water but also has proteins and other scientific stuff that you probably don't really care about. It is used to treat a myriad of diseases, including hemophilia. Now that the PSA on donating blood plasma is over, let's get onto the good part: how to make money off of selling your blood plasma. There are donation facilities all over the country. You can easily find locations online. After you've found one, call in and set up an appointment. At your first appointment, you will be screened via way too many health questions and a blood test. After this process (which can take 45 minutes), you will go into the donation room. There, they will let you lay down on a reasonably comfortable chair. Shortly thereafter, a phlebotomist will put a pretty good-sized needle into a vein in your arm. A machine next to you will then start up and start sucking your blood out. After it has gotten a decent amount, it will spin your blood in a centrifuge, separating out the plasma. After that, the machine will push what's left of your blood back into your blood stream and start the cycle all over again. The whole process will take around an hour. During this time, you can read or do pretty much any other sedentary activity that you'd like. After it's over, you will be given a pin number and can withdraw money from an atm using your special pin. You should expect at least $40 each time you donate. Many places will give you as much as $75 for your second visit because they can't use your first donation unless you give a second donation. You can usually donate twice each week, which is much different than donating straight blood. So there ya have it. You can make about $100 extra dollars each week for 2 hours of sitting around. It's basically free money for those of you that aren't IB Positive (IB Positive I'm not letting them stick a needle in me...). One last thing: Make sure to drink lots of water and eat healthy food before you go in. Dehydration and high lipid levels (from eating fatty foods) will make the process take much longer.

Money Making Tip of the Day: Amazon Mechanical Turk

If you haven't heard of Amazon Mechanical Turk, this should give you a decent overview of the service. Mechanical Turk is a marketplace where companies post jobs that can't be done by computers, such as typing information from business cards into databases or transcribing audio files. Most of the tasks are very simple but require a human to fix computer errors. Once you sign up for the service, you will be given a list of "Hits". These are jobs that you can choose to accept or not accept after previewing the task requirements. From there, you follow the task requirements, accept the hits, and make money on a per-hit basis.

Tips for Making More From Mechanical Turk

1. Make sure to accept each hit before you do it, otherwise you will be doing the work for free.
2. If you find a hit you like, check the "Automatically Accept the Next Hit" Box at the top of the page. This will save you time, which in turns makes you more money.
3. If a hit sounds too good to be true, it is. Most of the hits will not make you very much money. The ones that say they will make you a lot of money are either a scam or take a lot more time than the others
4. Don't be afraid to return a hit. If you know a hit is going to take more time than others in a set, return it and go for the easier ones. Again, this saves you time and makes you more money.
5. Sharpen your typing skills. Most of the tasks require you to type something. If you can type faster, you will make money faster.

How Much Will You Make With Mechanical Turk

To be perfectly honest with you, you shouldn't expect to make a lot of money with Mechanical Turk. There are very few people who can make a lot using the system. I personally only make about $5 a day, and that's when I'm on a roll. So don't rely on this as a major source of income. Instead, think of it as something you can do in your down time to make a few extra bucks. If you have any questions, comments, tips, etc., please comment on this post!