Want to earn hundreds — and potentially thousands — of dollars to test vaccines, medical devices and other health treatments? That’s the deal you get when you agree to “volunteer” for clinical studies through a site called Velocity Clinical Research.
The catch is that you’re sometimes testing drugs and treatments that could make you sick.
But, let’s start at the beginning.
What is Velocity Clinical Research?
Velocity is a biomedical research firm that studies drugs, treatments, vaccines and medical devices for a wide array of pharmaceutical companies and medical research organizations. It enlists consumers to test these devices, generally paying a per-visit stipend for the volunteer’s time and expenses.
How it works
If you want to sign up to participate in clinical trials, you’ll need to the site’s phone app, called Vision Engage. Once ed, you’ll answer several questions about your age, health and preferred trial location. The app will then let you know whether you currently qualify for a clinical trial.
If you don’t currently qualify, you may later. The site will you when it has a trial that fits your profile.
And when you’re offered a study, a Velocity representative will tell you where the study is being conducted, what’s required, how much it pays, and any known risks. You decide whether to participate.
Velocity Clinical Research review
A scan of a dozen Velocity locations indicate that participants are typically compensated $75 to $350 per office visit. However, the site does not disclose the compensation for the vast majority of its studies. Instead, it only gives potential participants this information, when they’re ed by phone.
By and large, however, studies that require healthy adults are paid. The compensation for studies that are only open to someone with a disease may be paid in the form of free treatment.
What you’ll do
Clinical trials are all about testing the effectiveness and safety of new drugs and treatments. So, when you volunteer for clinical trials, you’re g up for a lot of medical testing — blood tests, heart and blood-pressure monitoring, urinalysis. The monitoring generally doesn’t require much physical activity, but you have to be comfortable with a lot of medical poking and prodding.
You should also know that every new drug has some risk. Thus, there’s at least a slight chance that whatever treatment you’re testing could make you sick.
By the time drugs and treatments make it to the human trial stage, the nature of the risks are usually at least partially understood. And Velocity medical personnel will explain these risks to you. Be sure to pay close attention and watch for any averse health affects. Not only does the research firm need to know about these, you need to be an advocate for your own health and safety with medical research side gigs.
If you think, at any point, that the research is threatening your health, you have the absolute right to drop out. And Velocity will pay you for the portion of the study you completed. Naturally, you can earn more if you participate to the end. But only do that if you feel comfortable with the way it’s going.
The good things about Velocity
Unlike many other research firms, Velocity has a wide geographic reach. The site brags that it more than 60 locations in the U.S. and 17 in Europe. (Comparatively, Altasciences has only nine study locations.) So, if you’re anywhere near a big city, you may have several convenient locations to choose from. Each location also has access to different types of studies, so your chance of being able to participate in paid research here is pretty good.
The site also gets rave reviews from most former study participants. Thousands of consumer reviews on both Google Play and the Apple App store give Velocity an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars — a remarkably high rating for this type of side hustle. Reviewers say that the company’s staff are professional, courteous and concerned about the patient experience.
The site’s staff also is good about explaining the risks of any individual study, what’s involved and how participants will be compensated. Generally speaking, compensation is paid quickly and without fail.
The bad news
However, largely because of the number of locations and that they don’t all do the same types of studies, finding a study that you might qualify for can be ponderous That’s because studies are listed on the app by location, not by type. And, because the site has so many locations, multiple locations may be equally convenient for you. If you check just one, you may miss out.
There is no central location for all of the studies available in, say, Southern California.
The site is also cagey about how much you might earn with any given study. While a few studies specify the payment you’d earn for each office visit, the website and app do not explain how long each of these visits might take nor how many of them would be required to complete the research.
For instance, a COVID booster study in Van Nuys simply says that “compensation may be provided.” You only get information about what’s entailed and what you’re paid, if you apply and are ed. In this case, the study pays $120 per office visit and there are seven visits total, for total pay of $840.
However, the first office visit is likely to require three hours and the others about an hour each — not counting the time it takes to get there. To be sure, that still works out to pay of roughly $90 an hour. But similar clinical testing sites are more straightforward about the pay — and often pay considerably more.
Competition
For example, you want to check whether there’s a clinical trial available with Altasciences, you can view all 20 of the site’s current Southern California trials in a glance by simply clicking on “current studies.” Of these, the most lucrative study offered $17,350 for a four-night overnight stay, plus 14 follow-up visits, a screening and a phone call. That works out to average pay of nearly $900 a day.
Recommendations
If you’re interested in clinical trials, you are likely to be well treated and paid at a nice hourly rate with Velocity. (You can sign up with Velocity here.) But, if you’re going for the big money, Altasciences is a better bet if you happen to be near one of the site’s nine U.S. locations. You can learn more about Altasciences here.
Other clinical research sites recommended by SideHusl.com: Fortrea and Parexel. Notably, all three of these sites offer highly lucrative opportunities. But be sure to understand the risks.
And know that if you ever feel uncomfortable, or like your health is being compromised, you have the right to leave the trial at any time.These sites will pay you for the amount of time/visits that you completed.
Kristof is the editor of SideHusl.com, an independent website that reviews moneymaking opportunities in the gig economy.
