Can You Make Money Selling Sound Effects?

Making sound effects sounds like a cool way to make some money! But is this even possible? The short answer is, yes! You can make money with sound effects and this post will tell you how!

Now before you get your hopes up, it's important that you understand that you will probably (definitely) not make a living selling sound effects. But if you like making sound effects, why not try selling them to make a little cash! Even if you have never made sound effects but think it would be cool to try, it's really not that hard to do!

Keep in mind that you will need a decent sound recorder to record the sounds if you plan on selling them. Unfortunately your phone probably won't be good enough. You should be able to find a microphone on Amazon if you don't already have one. You'll also want to get some sort of software like Audacity for editing your sounds. You can download Audacity for free here.


Now let's talk about where you can sell your sound effects, and then we'll talk about how much you can make and what kind of sounds sell the best.

Pond5 is a website that sells stock media. They sell a few different things, including music, video footage, photos, and sound effects. You can easily make an account and upload your sound effects, and if they pass the review, they'll be up for sale in a few days!

Now you're probably wondering just how much money you can make from this, so I'll tell you about my personal experience with it so far. I made an account with a friend to sell sound effects on Pond5. We started about nine months ago, uploading 50 sound effects. We really haven't done anything with it since then. We've made about $36 and it only took us a few hours to make the effects. The nice thing is that even though we haven't been uploading anything or doing any work, we can still make money from downloads!

I also recently added a few sound effects to my personal Pond5 account (which I mainly use for my music), and I have made $6 within the first month. Obviously that's not much but hey, it hardly took any work and maybe I'll keep getting sales from those sounds!

The amount of money you make will depend on the time you put into it. If you make a ton of quality sounds, you might make a decent amount of spending money over time. Like I said earlier, you won't make a living doing this, but if you like making sound effects, why not try making a little money with them!

To find out what kind of sound effects sell best, take a look around Pond5 and see how many sales different sounds are getting. That will give you an idea of what types of sounds do well. Below is a list of some sound effects I have made. Click the links to view them on Pond5.

Trumpet Fanfares
Stick Snapped
Whoosh
Trombone Failure

If you decide to make an account with Pond5, please go through one of the links on this post to get to the site, because I can get some referral commission if you use my links! Also, please let me know how you do selling sound effects!

UPDATE (2/16/2015)- Just thought I'd add that I just sold 7 sound effects between yesterday and today! That was a nice unexpected bump in sales. Good luck with your sounds!