Hey there,

Desslock, your comment: "Curious conclusion: The Canadians don't even go to their own sites.(of course, I could digress into some serious lampooning here about Canadians....)" shows that most American webmasters probably don't "get" it when it comes to Canada.

Canadians don't go to their own websites, as you say, because almost every single website run by a Canadian bills in U.S. dollars because there are no cc processors in Canada who will process for porn. The Canadian banking industry decided they didn't want to deal with porn, so they don't. So virtually every single Canadian porn site processes through ccbill, iBill, Verotel, or someone else.

And again, why would a Canadian pay $52 a month to purchase a premium membership that normally bills at $39.95 US.

As for your "weak" American dollar, you've got it in reverse. Your "weak" American dollar should actually mean an increase in sales from Canada. When I started webmastering a year and a half ago, your dollar was very strong. Canadians were paying about $1.48 for $1.00 U.S. This was great when I took those U.S. ccbill and MANcheck cheques to the bank. A $450 commission cheque was worth almost $700 by the time I converted it into Canadian. Today, it's worth $584.00 ... big difference.

But from your point of view: a $24.95 US membership was worth $37.00 CDN, at today's exchange rate, it's costing Canadians about $32.00. Not a significant change perhaps, but probably enough to net you guys some more memberships.

And you say that by reducing your rates to sell to Canadians that you wouldn't be "making" any money. But if you picked up an extra 100 memberships a month from Canadians, you probably wouldn't be complaining. And you're still making money because a Canadian membership isn't going to chew through $24.95 worth of your bandwidth.

And BTW, Sean Cody advertises like crazy here in the gay newspapers. Sean Cody charges $24.95 US for a membership. If SC is paying the advertising prices to take out full-page ads in Canadian gay newspapers, SC is getting Canadians to sign up.

Cheers,
Dzinerbear