U.S. Dollar Woes for Non-U.S Web Based Business

Oh, this international business thing and doing business in U.S. dollars has become a dangerous game. Many are saying that the U.S. dollar may completely crash at some point, causing a heck of a problem for us non-U.S. residents doing biz in the commonly accepted & expected U.S. currency. And add to that, the Canadian dollar is gaining strength, causing trouble all around for little ol' me.

According to this article at Bloomberg.com, The Bank of Canada is going to take a “wait and see approach.” Hmmm…sounds a bit familiar to this business owner.

It’s an issue that has been affecting us non-U.S. Internet marketers for several years now. Back in 2004, I was losing about 40 cents per dollar. Then in 2006 it dropped again and I lost another 5% of my income as well.

The trend continues…me and my bank hit an all time low when I cashed a large check and received only $1.03 Canadian for every U.S. dollar. That’s a 57 cents on the dollar loss since the time I first started my online business.

Anyway, I’ve lamented about this before, so I probably sound like a broken old record. I have considered selling in Canadian dollars, but since most of my customers are American, I wonder if I’d lose more potential sales than money lost in the exchange rate.

Outside of being a product seller, being an affiliate isn’t much better. It is just NOT easy to find a lot of good Canadian companies paying out in Canadian funds. Or when I do find one, they sell to Canada only – alienating a huge chunk of my audience.

Even most of the CANADIAN companies I work with are paying out in U.S. dollars. One notable exception being Dr. Ken Evoy’s Site Sell. Since they sell in Canadian dollars, they pay in Canadian dollars. Of course, that program is only really useful for affiliates in the B2B market.

I did recently come across CanadianSponsors.com and they are a Canadian-focused affiliate network. But holy smokes, the process to sign up was laborious. I signed up. About a day later, I got an email from a real live person (form email, but it was manually sent) asking me to confirm that it is my company that was signing up. I wrote back and said yes. Then whomever received my confirmation proceeded to approve my application. Then I received an automated request to confirm my sign up and it asked me to click a link to confirm. LOL – didn’t I already confirm? Anyway, I did and then my application was approved and I was active.

When I looked inside, I saw most of the offers inside are pay per lead. You know surveys, VOIP, insurance deals, etc. Many are for Canadians only, but there are include American and some international opportunities. So there may be an offer or two that might prove useful.

But I laugh at the whole experience of getting in there. It is so typical of Canadian websites – they make the process hard. In fact, so many online “stores” don’t even have online ordering available. For goodness sake, you cannot order anything off the Walmart.ca. For goodness sakes – you can’t order from WALMART.ca!

The fact is, Canadians just don’t buy online the way Americans do, plus the population difference is staggering. We USE the Internet in large numbers, but as far as ecommerce goes, we’re still way behind. But I’m not sure if it’s because we the consumers aren’t ready or the business owners aren’t making it available. I'm starting to think it's the latter.

So, I’m still essentially where I was before. What about you? Whether you’re Canadian or from elsewhere in the world…how are you dealing with this U.S. dollar thing?