This smelly side hustle literally turns crap into gold.
A TikTokker discovered an enterprising, albeit odorous, way to earn up to $180,000 per year — by donating poop to science.
A clip detailing the heave-inducing life hack and her feces-to-fortune success story amassed nearly 170,000 views on TikTok.
“Wanna make $$$ donating your [poop]?” teases TikToker @Isafidelino in the post to her almost 30,000 followers.
According to the clip, prospective stool donors simply go to humanmicrobes.org, where they can earn an eye-popping $500 per “stool donation.” If you’re having a bowel movement every day, that ex-crap-olates out to $180,000 a year for simply sitting on a toilet, per the USA and Canada-based stool donor network.
Why do they offer such a massive sum for excrement?
The site explains: “It is a major problem that the vast majority of people in modern society are in poor health and have damaged gut microbiome.” To help maintain people’s fecal-librium, human microbes is trying to find “people who are healthy enough to be high-quality stool donors, and connect them with doctors, researchers, clinical trials and individuals who need to re-balance their gut microbiome.”
They then harvest their dung — the easiest way to collect gut microbes — and use it for research or procedures to battle deadly gut infections.
To see if their feces are fit for the job, contributors must undergo a series of crap-lications, including filling out a “screening questionnaire.” They also must undergo a test to verify their “stool type and physical fitness,” and complete a video interview.
If approved, the stool donor is finally ready to poop for pay. The actual collection process involved storing one’s dung in a plastic bag and then shipping it to Human Microbes or a recipient on dry ice — the costs of which are prepaid for, per the site.
Best of all, manure merchants are kept “completely anonymous,” so people will never know that your business is literally doing your business.
Needless to say, the idea of going from feces to fortune set the wheels turning on TikTok.
“Finally get something out of my IBS,” said one intrigued viewer, while another wrote, “I’ll be the first Poollionaire.”
“For $180 thousand a year ? Sign me up,” exclaimed another of potentially heeding nature’s call for cash.
But don’t be lured by the idea of a gastrointestinal gold rush just yet: becoming a dung donator involves more than the ability to go number 2.
According to Human Microbes, prospective poop donors must be in the “tiny 0.1% of people who are still healthy enough to qualify as a high-quality stool donor,” per the site. This means being in “exceptional physical and mental health” — top athletes are best — and under 30, although there is no minimum age requirement. Minimal antibiotic usage is also a must, so you don’t upset the balance of the fecal system.
The selective criteria certainly mean most applications will go down the toilet. In fact, despite screening 26,000 potential donors, human microbes still hasn’t found the supply of high-quality donors they’re looking for — hence the $500 per poop financial incentive.
The requirements may seem stringent, however, Human Microbes says selectiveness is essential given deteriorating health levels nationwide. “Chronic disease and general poor health have been drastically increasing over the past decades to the point where the vast majority of the population is now extremely unhealthy,” they write. “It goes well beyond a single generation being a little overweight due to eating too much.”
They add, “It is an exponentially worsening crisis with each generation, in large part due to the loss of our host-native microbes that get passed down generationally.”
Thankfully not all potentially lucrative side hustles are so selective or smelly. An enterprising TikTokker is going viral after sharing how she earns upwards of $10,000 per month by selling rebranded items on Amazon.