Does currency play a factor on how much you charge?
In my case yes. I asked for a 2% increase on one of my employers when the US dollar went down.
I will just absorb the shortfall since most clients couldn't care less if the US$ is falling. If the value of US$ is rising, are you giving a discount?
If I am understanding you correctly... I am going to say, not really for me. All my business is within the US (where I am) so I don't really adjust my rates if the dollar goes down. I do however, adjust my rates 4% yearly as a general cost of living adjustment.
That's precisely the point - all businesses are conducted in USA and in US$. There is no reason to consider currency fluctuations except in cases of cross-border transactions. Lee, I guess you may have to look for another reason to compensate your forex losses.
Well, if a user such as myself who does online-freelance and uses Paypal, then I guess it matters since those users get paid in US funds and those funds gets converted to their non-US currency (whatever that is, such as Canadian Dollars or British pounds) when they withdraw the money.
Lee, I had the same problem as you regarding the falling US$ but you are not standing in the shoes of your clients. Why should they care about the falling US$ when the base currency is US$? The fact that we are getting less in foreign currency is our own problem!
Well, they should care if they really like the worker that they have and want them to keep on working for their company/website.
I had a Client tell me once that I was not first choice for a project but the guy that was wanted to add an extra 2% or 4% (whatever the PayPal fee was) to his fee because the Client wanted to pay with PayPal.
I guess what I am trying to say is; I would need a better reason to charge more than something that I consider would be the cost of doing business.
Precisely the point. Take paypal payments for example, if client pays cash via bank transfer or paypal cash balance, I will get the full amount. If client pays using credit card, I would have to incur a fee to accept the payment. This fee to me is the cost of doing business.