If you want to earn a small amount of cash fast - donate plasma.

Plasma donation centers are located in every state in the U.S., usually with at least one - often two or more places in each city. Some of the shelters are clean and very sanitary looking and that's where you want to go. Others look downright seedy, so avoid them.

Be prepared to wait for at least an hour, often up to three hours if you're waiting with lots if people and the center, God's knows why, is understaffed. You will be waiting mostly with younger people, people who definitely do not look like corporate-material - there are lots of home-boys and people who look like they're down on their luck. Some look homeless, although to donate plasma, you must have a home address and maybe a shelter qualifies.

When you arrive there for the first time, you'll be required to fill out a donor application form, mostly related to your health history. If you have any history of infectious disease, you will most probably not be allowed to donate. If you are HIV positive or have/had Hepatitis, or have been with anyone with HIV or Hepatitis you will also be ruled out. Thankfully, they only want healthy people, so if you are healthy, by all means, go there because there is always a need for plasma.

A worker at the plasma center told me that plasma is referred to as the "champagne of blood products." It's used for burn-victims and after the red blood cells are separated from the plasma, the plasma is the color of amber-colored beer or dark-urine.

Bring something to read, because you will have to wait. Even when the doors open, there is often a long line of about twenty to thirty people. Everyone wants free easy cash. There's nothing quite like it. If you're late with your phone bill, you can be in and out of there within a few hours with $35 depending on where you live and what they pay.

When you are finally called, you will enter a booth where your blood pressure will be taken. If it's too low, forget it, you will be turned away - they don't want someone fainting on them.

Then you will have to wait a few more minutes and you will have your photograph taken (this is for first-time donors as well as for donors after six months or so). Then you will be called by a plasma worker and you will enter a room in which there are rows of people lying on what look like Freudian couches. Everyone looks calm and patient. It's all good. People are helpful and cooperative, the staff is usually sensitive

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