Susan Robinson has rent to pay. And organs. Solution?

Tired of pulling pints for a pittance? Sick of the beep beep beep of the checkout? Had enough of refolding clothes for four hours solid at a time? Combining student life and a 15 hour working week is entirely possible. However combining a part-time job, your studies, having a social life, taking part in a society and fripperies such as eating, sleeping and smelling pleasant, is nigh-on impossible. Something inevitably suffers, usually you and quite often the essay due the next day.

Everyone could do with a bit of spare cash, be it to pay the rent, tuition fees, socialising (booze), or maybe, you’ve paid off your student debt and have started to think about your pension. Whatever your motivation (or lack of it), if you, like me, have spent some time in the retail sector and your faith in the milk of human kindness has started to curdle, or you are starting to feel a mite strained financially you might want to consider more original ways of earning money.

Stealing? No. Ann Summers? Well, who am I to judge? Pyramid selling? Wrong again. I am of course talking about selling your body...oh, you thought I meant prostitution? Bless you, no. More specifically, parts of your body, to medical science.

This does not entail relieving yourself of an arm or a leg, or, heaven forbid, your liver (you need that for the alcohol you can now afford). If you are a woman, with ovaries, and willing to travel, you can donate your eggs for up to £4000 a pop.

There is a limit to how many times you can do this, five is the maximum, however, £20,000 equals a deposit on a flat, and you are set up for life. Although I can see the less Machiavellian among you being phased by side effects such as early menopause, increased risk of ovarian cancer, abdominal pain, nausea and diarrhoea.

Then there are the ethical issues. How would you feel about the anonymous existence of someone who is partly your own flesh and blood? How would the resulting child feel about the anonymous existence of someone who is partly their flesh and blood? There are people who do this for purely altruistic reasons, content in the knowledge that they are giving infertile couples a priceless gift whilst many others are attracted by the monetary compensation.

If that does not entice you, and you are the proud possessor of long lustrous locks, then why not sell them? Banbury Postiche, premier wig-maker and the main buyer of human hair in the UK will buy your tresses, providing it is six to 12 inches long, for three pounds an ounce. Now, to give an example, I have shoulder-length hair and I figured out that comes to a grand total of around three pounds. Some things only work for Jo in Little Women.

Fellow students in the States have a rather more profitable option, they can make up to £120 a month through the donation of plasma, the fluid in which blood cells are suspended. However, this takes around twice as long as normal blood donation and does require impeccable health.

Meanwhile, with methods that seem to resemble a charity auction rather than a health service, the American Northwest Red Cross Blood Service have been known to offer £13 petrol cards, Rolling Stones tickets and iPods in exchange for a pint of your finest. Other such incentives have been considered; in New England there have been proposals to waive driving license fees for citizens who agree to become organ donors and Dutch health minister Ab Klink deliberated bartering health insurance for donated kidneys.

Less Merchant of Venice and more pleasure than business, in Los Angeles ‘high quality’ sperm donors can earn £38 times a visit, amounting to a tidy £462 a month. Opportunities for women in LA are slightly more seated in history, a modern wet nurse could earn up to £45 a day by selling their milk for £1.80 an ounce (perhaps one to do once you’ve hired your womb out as a surrogate).

Closer to home, if you are already, or are willing to become obese, the government are contemplating offering vouchers, hopefully not for McDonalds, and cash rewards as an incentive to adopt a healthier lifestyle and lose weight. And finally, the old fail-safe, drug-testing. At your local hospital this can earn you up to £2,000 a session, but who knows what else?

Upon reflection, those less, surgically invasive, ways of earning money seem much more appealing. See you from behind the till...beep beep.