Abstract: By conducting a sulfonation step for bringing a fatty acid alkyl ester into contact with a sulfonating gas in the presence of a coloring inhibitor to sulfonate the fatty acid alkyl ester, an esterification step for esterifying the product of the sulfonation step with a lower alcohol, a neutralization step for neutralizing the esterified product of the esterification step to obtain a neutralized product, a bleaching step for bleaching the neutralized product to obtain a bleached product, and preferably an optional deodorization step for deodorizing the bleached product, the production process can be simplified and &agr;-sulfofatty acid alkyl ester salts which have a pale color close to white and preferably have less odor can be obtained.