The decline of the Dollar
Most of my advertisers pay me in Dollar and I have to convert that revenue to Euro which is either done by the advertising agency (Google Adsense for instance) or by cashing in a Dollar check at my local bank (Tribalfusion). When I started blogging I received €850 for $1000 which was not an excellent conversion rate but good enough.
Today I receive €675 for $1000 which is €175 less than two years before. This has some consequences for non-US webmasters because advertising programs that pay in Dollar are becoming unattractive to them. I'm happy that I have one advertisement program that pays in Euro and they will soon generate more revenue than Adsense is generating which I never thought would be possible.
There is no end in sight unfortunately and the only positive aspect that I can find is that it becomes much cheaper to buy goods and service in the United States.
Want some examples? Taken from Amazon.com and Amazon.de, in brackets the exchange price)
Item | Dollar | Euro |
Playstation 3 40 GB | $399 (€269) | €399 ($591) |
Xbox 360 Pro Value Bundle | $349.99 (€235) | €349.89 ($518) |
Apple MacBook Pro MA895 | $1919.98 (€1295) | €1798.95 ($2665) |
Even if you add import tax on the US items you will make a great bargain buying many items in the United States. I really hope nevertheless that the Dollar will rise again in the near future but I honestly can't see this happen.
Update 26 January 2012: Exchange rates have improved a bit in past years. Lets see how this turns out for a comparable product.
Xbox 360 Slim (US price: $199.99, in Euro 151,20€ - Euro price: 177€, in US Dollar $233,10).
You are not saving anywhere near as much as you would in 2007. If you add tax and shipping costs, you'd actually pay more for the product in the United States than you would in your home Euro country.
Update 26 April 2014:Â Things are getting worse again for people from the Eurozone as you can see from the examples below.
Playstation 4 (US price: $399, in Euro 288, 41€ - Euro price: 483€, in Dollar $668, 19)
Xbox One (US price: $459, in Euro 331,78, 41€ - Euro price: 449€, in Dollar $621,15)
Advertisement
Bob it is Vibrantmedia. They require at least 250000 impressions per month if someone recommends you to them or 500000 otherwise. They use those double-lined green links.
Let me know if you meet the requirements and I can get establish the contact for you ;)
If you don’t mind my asking, who is the Euro publisher?
As a webmaster myself, the dollar devaluation is hurting my profits, I’d be interested to try a Euro pub.
As you say, spending the money you earn in the US where possible is the best option, I use it to pay for my hosting and buy DVDs, games, etc from the US … sadly the majority of my true expenses aren’t in the US.