In This Economy?

Sometimes, when your finances are getting tight, it’s best to look inside yourself for answers. Literally. As it turns out, with a little patience, your body can become a self-replenishing field of cash crops just waiting to be plowed and ran through one of those massive combines. Seriously.

Before I get started let me take this opportunity to admit that I don’t donate bodily stuffs. I tried to donate blood once and passed out during the questionnaire. With questions like “Have you ever had sex with an animal prior to 1978 in eastern Africa during an eclipse?”, it was just more than my blood or I could handle. Plus, I made sweet love to an ibex in Egypt back in ’75 — so no one wants my bodily stuffs anyway.

Now that I have that part out of the way I want to provide all of you out there with some info on exactly what you can give, how much of it you can give and how you can get something like this started. Let’s jump into the deep end first.

Sperm/eggs

Selling the currency of reproduction is becoming more and more popular with every shitty new turn the economy takes. Male or female, you could cash in on selling your little you’s, just be ready to undergo a massive amount of scrutiny first. In the case of sperm donors only about 5% actually make the cut and get into the institutional pleasure palace that is the sperm bank exam room. The other 95% get canned way earlier due to things like age, genetic issues, tattoos, a past that is riddled with kinky sex (damn you, ibex!), etc . The screening process is even more rigid for women trying to unload their eggs. However, if you make the cut, the payday for sperm can be anywhere from $50-$200 a pop (eww) and an egg can fetch its donor as much as $7,000. Yeah. Serious money.

The only other potential problem with this though is that you may see some kid at a grocery store many years later that slightly resembles you and then go completely insane with curiosity about whether or not some of your pawned off you’s are in this kid’s DNA. But hey, in this economy, money is money. Once you make peace with the fact that you could potentially start setting up franchises across the country, look for sperm banks in your area by searching the yellow pages and/or Internet for “sperm banks” or “cryobanks”. If that doesn’t turn up any results (sperm banks can sometimes be hard to find as they like to keep things discreet) visit spermbanker.com for a pretty comprehensive list.

Blood

This is the most commonly donated bodily thing. Whole blood can be donated (safely) every 56 days. That equates to only about six to seven times a year. Plus, the Red Cross, who are the largest blood collection agency in the world, won’t pay for blood. So, other than the great feeling you get from doing the right thing and a cold piece of average (at best) pizza, it doesn’t seem like there is much upside to donating blood. However, there is more to your blood than just blood. There is:

Plasma and platelets

Plasma is the liquid portion of your blood and platelets are small blood cells that help with clotting. Both of these blood elements can be sold. One thing that is good to know going into this though is that the process for both of these takes around 90 minutes and can be quite taxing. If you struggle getting through your office’s blood drive, DO NOT try to give plasma or platelets. You will embarrass yourself (see me: collapsed on the floor, questionnaire in hand). Plasma and platelets pay similarly with first donations netting anywhere from $30 to $50. Typically your payment will increase as you become more of a regular.

To donate blood, plasma or platelets just look up “blood center” in the yellow pages or on the Interweb. They want your blood stuffs so they are not hard to find.

Hair

Attention all you long haired hippies out there. Cut your hair — and get paid. Hair can fetch a wide range of prices. $5 to $10 an ounce seems to be a common rate but some people have made more selling their hair on eBay, which I think is really, really weird.

“Hey how did you get the money to buy that sweet TV?”

“I sold my hair. On eBay.”

Yeah, but as I said above, money is money. Check out eBay.com or thehairtrader.com for more details.

Kidney (trust me, you only want to sell one)

Selling your kidney is illegal in America. So, what this means, is that in order to sell your kidney you will have to spend thousands of dollars to travel to a really sketchy country, where they won’t abide by that whole Hippocratic oath thing. By the time you recover from the inevitable gangrene that will result from being operated on with rusty instruments, you probably won’t be seeing much profit.

Basically, selling your kidney is not awesome.

Your “services”

This one is on here as a joke. Prostitution is illegal. Unless you’re Vincent Gallo.

Tags: bodily fluids, eggs, hair, jobs, kidneys, sperm, Vincent Gallo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 5:07 PM and is filed under Good News, Humor, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.