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UK Web Designers - Don’t suffer from Exchange Rates
Figures in red are 2007 - Figures in green are 2006
Okay well when I wrote this article the exchange rate from dollars into pounds was an amazing 0.48579. Well if you have been web designing and are form the UK this may be really annoying you - right? Now lets explore why that would be.
The exchange rate one year prior was 0.538039. Now that means for every dollar you would have received 54p compared to todays 48p. So you might be thinking - a difference of 6p, why bother? Well when you think of it in terms of a design sale. Freelancer working in the UK generally receive payments in dollars. A typical designer might be selling a template on a forum for $100. When you receive the payment into your UK account you will receive £48.58. If you had sold that design one year before you would have received £53.80. Thats a difference of £5.22. Still don’t think you are losing out. Think of it this way - your template has depreciated in value by 9.7% 
in one year! Annoyed yet?
If you need the money straight away to pay bills or whatever; sorry i don’t have a solution. However if you are like me and use web design and adsense as a money to save for the future then this option is for you. The answer? - Set up a US account. Its easy and can be done relatively easy. When you have set up that account you can receive payment into your paypal and withdraw them into your US bank account and you can receive adsense revenue straight into the account. This is beneficial because hopefully the dollar will one day get stronger therefore increasing their value when you exchange them into pounds. That will mean you can leave the dollars into the account until the exchange rate is better.
How to set up a US bank account
There is really three stages to setting up a US bank account. I will go through each stage as quickly as possible.
Stage 1 - Setting up a US mailing address.
You need to set up a mailing address to receive information and letters. This can be done reasonably simply on the following website: http://www.usa2me.com
Stage 2 - Set up a paypal account .
You need to set up a paypal account with the address given to you in stage 1. This is the most common way of receiving payments on the internet. Atleast to me it is.
Stage 3 - Set up the actual US bank account.
An easy way to do this is to simple visit http://www.etrade.com. Sign up there as appropriate and register for an account. If you need further details on signing up visit the site given at the end.
I hope this article proved useful to any web designer from the UK to highlight the amount of money we lose because of our countries greatness and America’s poor excuse for a currency 
Further details on setting up a US bank account can be found on the following website: US Bank Account Guide
Article written by Michael Clarke on Uniongraphite.com
4 Responses
Nice article, I have never thought about the currency conversion rates at all when I used to do banner design…
Thanks for sharing…
- Michael- July 23rd, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Not the email address which must be american but the actual posting address for the bank and for paypal (i think) need to be the american one which you set up.
This is great advice for those in the UK. It could potentially be good for those on the Euro system as well, but would only be able to tell with further research. As an American, I know that you leaving your money in the US for American banks to reinvest is also a win win situation.
Cheers on the great Idea
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Great article might consider doing this but why do we need the paypal email to be the american one surely that doesn’t matter?