Hey all,

Someone wants to hire me to make sound effects for an app they are making. Has anyone here ever done this before? What would be a fair fee to charge?

It’s a very hard thing to estimate with the info you’ve given.  It also depends on exactly what they need and how much audio they need. 

It also depends on how experienced you are at making sound fx for app projects for money. 

Apps don’t usually have very big budgets and they commonly don’t make much money either.

They are unlikely to offer royalties either, but might accept a royalty buy out.  Which is usually your fee plus an additional percentage of that fee in which they ‘buy out’ your need for royalties.

There’s a couple of ways of looking at it despite you not telling us that much so far:

1 - You could give them a number, the highest number you can say with a straight face.  They might go for it. Alternatively, they might not like it and just get on soundcloud or the multitude of similar sites and find something off the peg that they could use and pay that person more realistically instead.

2 - The fact you are asking about this suggests that this is your first FX gig, so in that case, why not be nice and offer to work on spec and/or let them give you a number.  You might make less money than you wanted, but it has a good chance of getting you their next project.  Then you are better placed to ask for a better deal.

Thanks for your reply, and yes it’s my 1st, FX gig. I’ll talk to them this evening. Its an educational app with quizzes and stuff… Purtie basic effects for right and wrong answers.