International Affiliate Please Come In! (13)
Hi,
I live in HK and would like to know how other international affiliates like me handle their payment process.
You see my network pays me by wire. But the network asks for $30 for every wire. Also my local bank transaction fee for receiving wire is around $7.7. So the total FIXED cost is around $37.7 per payment.
But I have not factored in the exchange rate yet. As my credit card is issued by a Hong Kong bank, every payment I made to POF has to be converted into USD first. And the buying rate of for 1 USD is around 7.9. But when I receive payment, the selling rate of USD is merely 7.6 so I lost another (7.9-7.6)/7.6 = 4%. (My maths is bad. Please correct me if I am wrong.)
And wire transfer usually takes 3 days.
Another option is Paypal, but not every network has this option.
For Maxbounty, it pays me via paypal and the transferring of money from my Maxbounty account to my paypal account is both FREE and instant.
However, I have to wait for 6 days to get the money from my paypal account to my local bank account. And the exchange rate is even lower at 7.5.
If my traffic source is Facebook, everything will be fine because it accepts Paypal. I don't have to get the money back from paypal to my local bank account.
But POF and many other traffic sources only accept credit card, which means I have to transfer the money from the network to my bank account first, then pay my credit card.
This process will cost me
1. fixed transaction fee both from the network and the bank. &
2. time &
3. exchange rate.
The only way I can tackle it is to open a US credit card and bank account, which is near to impossible as I know.
Any ideas? Or just share how other international affiliates handle this problem?
Thanks.
You got usd from aff network, then u can give your cc bank USD.
this thing is a matter till you have short amounts, once u reach higher amounts, this becomes a habit..usually networks take around $20 as fees..
at your bank..talk to the manager der and arrange yourself an EFC ACCOUNT( thats what we have in India) where you dont need to convert dollars into your local currency at the moment.. and can avoid currency conversion volatility by this.
This might be different for various countries, best way is to talk to your branch manager, there are many ways you can negotiate these stuff you said above..
You need to open an account in USD if you wanna avoid dealing with exchange rates, you can go for a HSBC expat account (personal account) or if you wanna open a business account I know Rietumu in Latvia provides a multi-currency account with not much troubles.
Mehdi
A lot of these options require decent cash in the first place. If you are new and/or don't have $xx,xxx sitting around you should expect to just have to deal with it. Once you're running higher volume with decent ROI then it doesn't matter too much, and you can then head for options with less attrition to your funds.
Thanks so much guys for your contribution. It seems that I really have to earn a lot of money first before negotiating with the bank. Of course, if I have got that much, I will travel to USA to attend affilaite summit or just vacation and open a US account there.
Anyway, thanks!
If you go to the US you can sort things out in advance - e.g. get a Wyoming LLC, have a pocket of a few grand to have in an account that you open in person and start building some trust. I'm here in the US at the moment (~2 week trip) and was planning to do that but it seems without a decent chunk of cash I'm not really going to get to a better situation. A bank isn't exactly going to throw a decent limit CC at a foreign national with shit all cash who just happens to be in the country.
Thanks so much for the info zeno! I bet your meaning of "decent amount of cash" is at least 5 figure lol Hope to get there soon!
Hey bro, I'm from Singapore and have been thinking about these issues alot as my wires keep getting bigger.
I recently opened a USD account in SGD and intend to use that to receive wires as well as to pay off wires that are in USD.
For credit card payments I still stick to using my SGDs because I'm getting pretty good rewards over here.
For the time being though, assuming your earnings are not that large yet, I suggest you stick to monthlies and stick to a few networks so you reduce the number of wires from different networks.
Yep of course mate don't get into that much trouble before you start seeing some consistent cash from the networks, otherwise what you'll save on exchange rate you'll loose on account management fees 
Mehdi
Thanks to both of your comments!
You are right! I'll focus on one network first. Thank you!
In Hong Kong you can get a HSBC PowerVantage account that is multi-currency (this is what some of the others on this thread meant by accounts where you can receive in USD and it doesn't get converted). You then keep your wires in USD.
For the ads purchases you may be able to find a no exchange rate fee credit card in HK. They have these in the UK, but I am not sure if you will find one in HK.
See here for UK examples: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tra...p-travel-money
I think Zeno proposed the best long term strategy (created LLC in U.S., get US account, US paypal etc.) - however I don't know as I haven't got that far yet (I have friends in IM who have that kind of setup). If anyone has already done this would love to hear more.
Thanks guys!
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