How much can i sell blood for

Q: Can I earn money by selling my blood?

How much money you make depends on where youre located and how much you weigh. (Typically, the more a donor weighs, the more plasma can be collected and the longer an appointment takes.) But at most donation centers, compensation is around $50 to $75 per appointment. First-time donors sometimes get big bonuses, too.

This list is not complete. Specially trained technical staff are available at each blood collection center and details of each donor’s health and activities are discussed in a confidential setting prior to blood donation. The majority of donor eligibility rules are specified by the Food and Drug Administration for every collection center in the country. Other rules are determined by the medical professionals at specific blood centers, or with other regulatory bodies. Therefore, rules may differ between programs. Donor eligibility rules are intended to protect the health and safety of the donor as well as the patient who will receive the transfusion. The criteria listed are provided as guidelines to assist you in determining whether you may be eligible to be a blood donor. The final determination of eligibility is made at the time of donation. The guidelines listed below were last revised on 08/01/17. There may have been some changes to these criteria since the last revision date. The most up-to-date eligibility information can be obtained by contacting the Donor Client Support Center at 1-866-236-3276.

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Whole Blood
Can I earn money by selling my blood?
How much can you sell blood for USA?

*The number of allowable donations per year may be lower due to red cell and plasma loss limit guidelines. Final eligibility will be determined by the American Red Cross at the time of donation.

** Healthy means that you feel well and can perform normal activities. If you have a chronic condition such as diabetes, healthy also means that you are being treated and the condition is under control. If you are not feeling well on the day of your donation, please contact us to reschedule.

+ Please note higher requirements may apply in certain cases. Check with your donor center to confirm.

Your blood is comprised of 55% Plasma, 44% Red Blood Cells, and 1% White Blood Cells and Platelets. The volume of the components given varies by donation type.

So how much blood is taken when you donate for others in need?

Whole Blood

The average adult has around five liters of blood in their body. When you donate whole blood (the traditional donation method) the target is to collect 500ml, but a minimum of 460ml is taken due to dosage requirements and necessary anticoagulant additive mix proportions.

This volume represents approximately 10% of a donor’s blood supply.

A donor’s total blood volume is determined by their height, weight, and gender.

Donors with Type O, A Negative, B Negative blood with a larger blood volume can target their type and give more of their best gift in one visit by giving a double red cell donation.

With this method, whole blood is drawn from the arm, spun down in a bedside cell separator, and then the platelets and plasma are returned to the body.

Double red cell donation also produces two perfectly matched 250ml of units of their red blood cells.

Platelets

A normal platelet count for adults ranges between 150,000 to 450,000 platelets per microliter.

The number of platelets that can be donated during one automated platelet donation is also determined by a ratio of blood volume and platelet count.

These factors are programmed into the bedside computer and then up to three doses of platelets can be given. 200-400ml of plasma is also collected to sustain the platelets.

Donors with blood types AB, O, A, and B positive are encouraged to donate platelets for patients in need.

Donors who qualify may give whole blood as often as every 8 weeks, double red cells every 16 weeks, and platelets every 7 days.

Whatever way you choose to give, know that you are helping patients by giving them a second chance at life!

Dan Eberts

Dan ‘The Bloodman’ Eberts has worked in various capacities of Donor Recruitment, Promotions, Marketing and Communications, as well as Media and Public Relations at OneBlood and their legacy Tampa Bay Blood Centers in Florida for more than 31 years. He is a 50 gallon blood and platelet donor, the Chairperson of the Blood Donor Ministry at his church and a volunteer stem cell courier with “Be The Match” of the National Marrow Donor Program. Dan holds a Bachelor of Arts from Purdue University. He lives in Largo, FL with his wife Karen and they have two adult children.

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Donating plasma and donating blood are essentially the same process: the entry questionnaire, getting hooked up to a machine, the cookie afterward. But in the US there’s a key difference: one is an act of charity, and the other an act of commerce. So why is it that you get paid to donate plasma, but not blood?

It’s a common misconception that the Food and Drug Administration bans paying for blood. In fact, it only says blood from paid donors has to be labeled that way. But hospitals won’t use it. In practice, nobody really pays for blood, said Mario Macis, an economist at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School who has studied incentives for blood donation. “Even though it’s legal, it’s still considered not totally moral or ethical to pay cash to blood donors.”

Aside from the ickiness of handing out literal blood money, the FDA worries that paying donors would jeopardize the safety of the blood supply. No one with a blood-borne illness is eligible to donate, but the agency worries that if money were on the line, donors might lie about their health or their risk behaviors.

The science there is far from settled. But the World Health Organization finds it convincing enough that they discourage countries from paying blood donors. “Evidence shows significantly lower prevalence of transfusion-transmissible infections among voluntary nonremunerated donors than among other types of donors,” their commentary in 2013 read.

Donated blood is tested for diseases, anyway, but the FDA says it intends those steps to be redundant security measures, “like layers of an onion.”

Plasma donation — in which blood is drawn, plasma separated out, and then blood cells and other components put back into you — is often compensated. The FDA doesn’t require paid plasma donations to be labeled. The reason is that plasma collected this way never goes straight into another person. It’s broken into many different protein products that will become pharmaceuticals. Along the way, these components are processed to remove or kill any virus stowaways. “The risk of infection is inherently much lower,” said Dr. Christopher Stowell, who recently chaired the FDA’s Blood Products Advisory Committee. Whole red blood cells are too fragile to undergo the same kind of processing as plasma.

And there’s some evidence that paying for plasma does, indeed, lead more people to conceal their disease status or risk behaviors. For instance, the Government Accountability Office looked at California’s blood versus plasma supply back in the 1990s and found that the plasma had much higher rates of HIV. There are reports of desperate donors lying about illnesses to donate for cash.

However, the type of compensation matters. In a 2013 Science paper, Macis and others found that rewards such as gift cards, coupons, and T-shirts almost always boosted donations, and they didn’t find any effects on blood safety. (The FDA doesn’t count rewards like this as payment, as long as they can’t be easily turned into cash.) “Nonmonetary incentives do work,” Macis said. He thinks using more of these motivators could help the United States manage seasonal blood shortages.

Were you hoping for more than a T-shirt? Don’t even think about selling a kidney. The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 made it illegal to pay for organs. But in the 2011 case Flynn v. Holder, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a certain method of bone marrow donation could be compensated.

Traditionally, bone marrow was collected in a surgical procedure, with a hollow needle stuck straight into the pelvis. But in a more common method called peripheral blood stem cell apheresis, donors take drugs that release the stem cells from their marrow into their blood. Then they donate the cells through a needle in the arm and an apheresis machine — just like a plasma donation.

Centers that collect such cells pay up to $800, but they haven’t seen that much interest, the AP recently wrote. And the cells can’t be processed like plasma, so it’s unclear what the risk might be from paying donors in this nascent market.

Can I earn money by selling my blood?

How much money you make depends on where you're located and how much you weigh. (Typically, the more a donor weighs, the more plasma can be collected and the longer an appointment takes.) But at most donation centers, compensation is around $50 to $75 per appointment. First-time donors sometimes get big bonuses, too.

How much can you sell blood for USA?

Usually people can make $30 to $50 each time they go.” In most countries, blood donation for compensation is banned, but not in the United States. So, the U.S. supplies 70% of the world's plasma, according to the Niskanen Center.

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