How Much Do Bail Bondsmen Make in a Year?

Salary

Only a few bail agencies offer salaries and full benefits to their employees. The starting salary for a bail agent is pretty low, $20,000 or less per year, according to career information on the website State University. Bail Bonds 101, a resource for people interested in becoming bail agents, states that as an agent gains more experience, he can ask for salaries closer to $50,000 per year, but that most start at $10 per hour.

State University claims that many bondsmen work on commission, either for a larger business or more frequently on their own. Agents working on commission generally get a percentage of the bail, though the percentage can change drastically depending on where the agent works and the conditions of a given customer. Be aware that many agents working on commission do not get fringe benefits and hence must pay for insurance on their own and have no paid days off.

Agents that own their own business can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, according to articles by the New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. However, both articles caution that rich bondsmen are the exception to the rule. To make a lot of money, agents must be exceptionally good at reading customers and judging who will cooperate.

Most agents charge a standard 10 percent fee for posting a bail. That means that if the customer runs away, the agent owes the court the entire bail and 90 percent is the agent's own money. While many agents work with banks or insurance companies that can front tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars quickly, in most cases the agent pledges to pay that money back if the customer runs away. Hence, one fugitive customer can potentially wipe out an entire year's profits.