Best ideas for a quick income

Late on rent? Can't fill your car with gas to get to work? Assuming all available funds and traditional sources of credit are tapped out, here are 25 ways to raise cash in a few days.  Keep in mind, while all of these ideas are legal, some of them are not something we would encourage.  From being an Amazon Mechanical Turk to banking your sperm.

Sell Your Body Parts: Plasma, Hair And Breast Milk

In a truly free market economy, you'd be worth a lot of money in organs alone -- selling a kidney or lung could solve your money woes. However, the government and our sense of propriety permit you to only cash in on plasma, hair and (maybe) breast milk.

You can legally trade plasma for cash in the U.S., the fluid in which your blood corpuscles and other tiny bits circulate through your blood system. In most larger cities, there are clinics that will pay you up to $35 or so for some of your plasma, which you can donate twice a week. The process, which involves taking blood, draining off the plasma and returning the remains to your system, takes around half an hour to an hour. To donate, you'll need to be relatively healthy and drug free.

The hirsute can also make some quick cash by selling off their hair. Hair must be at least ten inches long, and uncolored. Well tended (not over-shampooed or sun damaged) hair is worth more. Web sites such as The Hair Trader serve as a market for those looking to sell or buy hair. Sales announced on the site range from several hundred to over a thousand dollars for a generous length of tresses.

Finally, some mothers who find themselves with an overabundance of breast milk have taken to offering the extra for sale on the Internet. However, the trade, of questionable legality and fraught with health issues, remains rather clandestine and we can't recommend it, even in a pinch.

Offer To Watch Children, Pets, or House-sit

You're out of cash. What do you do? Hit up Moms and Dads.
No, not your mom and dad, silly. Moms and Dads; those worn-out individuals with small children under five who barely remember what it's like to go to a restaurant and not spend the evening quelling tantrums and wiping up spilled water.

There are a lot of part-time jobs you can get in order to turn a quick buck, but exercising the babysitting option is one of the most immediately lucrative. Reliable babysitters are in high demand. You can almost name your price.

Babysitters earn upwards of $15 an hour these days. Offer to sit for friends' kids Friday or Saturday night. The parents will be only too happy to hand you cash when they return.

Other quick cash options? House-sit for friends of friends (friends by definition, will expect you to feed their cat and take in their mail for free. People you only know by association won't).

Read: Babysitter Jobs: They're Not Just For Teens Anymore

Collect Your Change

Everyone's living quarters are different, of course, but there's a certain (rather obvious at first) list that everyone should go through first.

Your bed stand. Don't most of us have a little spot where we put money, after we toss off our clothes at the end of the day? But, sure, there's probably nothing there, because you've already raided this.

Hone in on your home office. Have one? It seems like another natural place where you might have stuffed a few bills or coins aside at one point.

Survey your sofa. Underneath those cushions, where pocket change slides out and drops into the crevasses of your couch, is often, quite literally, a gold mine. And possibly half of a melted Hershey's bar. You really do need to get down here more often.

Linger in your laundry room. Another favorite place of wayward dollars and cents. Chances are you, a spouse or some other significant other, has taken some money from the pockets and put some money aside. Or maybe a quarter or wadded up dollar is in the machine right now, like a mob of people at an American Idol audition waiting to be discovered.

Check the car. Most of us have a little spot in the car where rogue coins wind up, when we don't have time to put them in a pocket or purse. They sometimes wind up under the car seats. You probably have something here.

The junk drawer. Everyone has one. I guarantee you have a few coins in here, unless you raided this recently. And again, perfect time to clean this out.

The kitchen. Chances are, your junk drawer is in here, or your jar of coins, which you've already thought of or taken from, but what about looking underneath or behind the refrigerator? Can anything fit under the oven? You can clean these behind or underneath these appliances and possibly find some money at the same time. And while you're here, what are you using this spare money for? Groceries? Then, of course, rifle through the coupons. That's money right there, or a way to make the money you do find go farther.

Your bedroom closet and laundry hamper. Go through the pockets of the clothes, clean and dirty. Some money has to be in there somewhere.

Share with us in comment the least places you've found money .