How to make a living off of clinical trials?

[winter5467]

How do you make a living off of clinical trials? What is your life like as a human guinea pig? Do you constantly move from state to state to enter different trials? Is traveling difficult for you? 

[ac]

I keep my expenses low. All I have to do is make $20K a year from studies. That's maybe 5 or 6 studies. I "work" less than 100 days per year. If you're not happy with $20K/yr then it'll be much more difficult. If you live in an area where there are at least 2-3 clinics within a couple hundred miles of you then you shouldn't need to travel to the further away clinics thereby saving you money on travel. Somewhere near Austin, TX is probably the best place for a full time lab rat. Kansas City is good as well as anywhere in southern Wisconsin or northern Illinois. Just keep yourself healthy and don't spend too much money and you should have no problem living solely off of money from studies.

[labratnewbie]

Jun 23, 2015 7:48:37 GMT -5 ac said:

I keep my expenses low. All I have to do is make $20K a year from studies. That's maybe 5 or 6 studies. I "work" less than 100 days per year. If you're not happy with $20K/yr then it'll be much more difficult. If you live in an area where there are at least 2-3 clinics within a couple hundred miles of you then you shouldn't need to travel to the further away clinics thereby saving you money on travel. Somewhere near Austin, TX is probably the best place for a full time lab rat. Kansas City is good as well as anywhere in southern Wisconsin or northern Illinois. Just keep yourself healthy and don't spend too much money and you should have no problem living solely off of money from studies.

I'm new to the professional lab rat thing but do know how the process works. I made a decision to do this full time after experiencing so much politics working for companies that don't appreciate you or pay you your worth. The key to being in this field, is a return on investment. All the money earned, after deducting travel expenses. I have come to my own conclusion and that you need to save up as much as you can, when you're away from home. Either make friends along the way and network, so if you do decide to do studies together, you can split expenses. If you're doing straight stay studies and there's a week or more days in between for OPVs.....Stay in a shelter! The way I see it, if you can room/bunk with total strangers, share commune living space in facilities where you don't exercise choice or privacy, it's no different than staying in a shelter, where you're housed and you don't pay a thing, other than maybe volunteering to help do chores, which is nothing in comparison to shelling out $$$ on hotels. I would rather put that money towards paying my own rent at home, than shelling out on extra money for a place to stay out of town. That's my analogy. Keep receipts of everything and budget your trips.

[asdfasdf]

It's easy to make $30K, if you hustle you can make $40K. Live somewhere good for this - Texas or IL/Wisconsin or northeast coast are good bets. I made $20K between three easy trials so far this year. Helps if you drive for Uber or have some kind of online job too, I make another 14 bucks an hour doing easy online research whenever I'm locked up. It's really nice being this comfortable without really having to work, my schedule is totally free whenever I want it to be.

[sam9009]

Jul 14, 2015 22:17:30 GMT -5 asdfasdf said:

It's easy to make $30K, if you hustle you can make $40K. Live somewhere good for this - Texas or IL/Wisconsin or northeast coast are good bets. I made $20K between three easy trials so far this year. Helps if you drive for Uber or have some kind of online job too, I make another 14 bucks an hour doing easy online research whenever I'm locked up. It's really nice being this comfortable without really having to work, my schedule is totally free whenever I want it to be.

Which company you do online research for?

[patrickregister1]

I have a question I'm hoping somebody can answer for me. I've done studies through celerion in Phoenix az, the problem with them is, even if you qualify to get in the study, there is a competition call, where everyone calls in At the same time. Are the other studies in Austin tx, etc the same? Or do they not so the whole competition call crap?

[mike]

No other clinic does that stupid call in, just Celerion.

[vark]

celerion sucks in that regard. nobody else does it that way. the trick is to be an alternate and they give you a preference so you don't have to do the call in, and you can save that up till thwy have a high pay short study - but that's like never. i'm at celerion now, but it's low pay with outpatients, so i'm going to end up just making enough to cover what i've spent over the years coming out here for screenings. we should probably get like 20 people together to write letters to the irb and sponsors to try to get them to change that. it's unfair to ask the subjects to carry so much of the expense of trials, when they could just change their procedures and cut that way down, by doing whatever lottery they want to do -before- you spend a few hundred dollars to come screen.

as to the main topic, in a good year i make $20K from studies and up to $10K from other projects. i live in a town with a low cost of living, drive cheap old volvos. my savings plan is that most years i a house or a volvo. i had hopes of developing some rental income after i get too old for most studies next year so i wouldn't have to go back to a job type job. too soon to say how that plays out.

[labratnewbie]

Sept 20, 2015 16:08:45 GMT -5 patrickregister1 said:

I have a question I'm hoping somebody can answer for me. I've done studies through celerion in Phoenix az, the problem with them is, even if you qualify to get in the study, there is a competition call, where everyone calls in At the same time. Are the other studies in Austin tx, etc the same? Or do they not so the whole competition call crap?

Bio Kinetics does the ed competitive call too!!