It’s not secret that Canadian businesses are strongly affected by how the Canadian dollar fares against the US dollar. Search marketing businesses are like others in this respect, and here are some of the responses I got over Twitter when asking some Canadian and international friends about how they dealt with international currency fluctuations.
From @neyne Branko Rihtman, SEO Scientist & Tens Online Marketing (Israel): “All of our clients pay us in US$. Since the exchange rate is all over the place now, we just adjusted our prices a bit and we hope that the gains will balance the losses over time.”
From @Nick Wilsdon e3 Internet Marketing (Russia/Ukraine): “We charge according to the client’s preferred currency and similar to @Neyne have had to increase some of our USD charges. It’s worth noting that some industries work exclusively in USD, for example casino/online gaming.”
From @Will Critchlow, Distilled Reputation Management (UK) – “We have exposure in both directions. Exposed to the € and $. Clients pay in both of above. Considering [a US]$ bank account.”
From @Dev Basu, Dev SEO & PubliPages SEO (Canada): My current base of clients is entirely Canadian. I suspect we’d either use a fixed rate or hedge the foreign currency risk. [I assume he means carry a certain amount of both currencies.]
From Martin Perron (@mperron), Bloom Search Marketing (Canada) –
Most of the time, US clients pay in USD, and Canadian clients pay in CAD, etc. [It] Depends on how the client settles their media. However, we do expose ourselves to a currency exchange gain/loss. Rather we take the risk than expose clients to the fluctuation. Sometimes it evens out; the CAD was high most of 2008, [meaning we had an] exchange rate loss, but with current rates, [it looks like we’ll have an] exchange rate gain in the books. Hope this helps!
From @Ruud Hein, Search Engine People SEO (Canada):
As to myself, I get paid in USD where possible. Not as an issue of policy, but because I haven’t given it much thought frankly. With the Canadian dollar dropping so rapidly recently, it could mean some extra profit :).
