How To Become An AdWords™ Expert

What the conditions are for becoming an acknowledged Google Advertising Professional and getting hired to manage other people's AdWords™ accounts.

Besides getting great results from your own advertising campaigns, you can also become an acknowledged AdWords™ Professional and earn from consultance fees and campaign management services.

Even before setting up your first account, maybe it's better if you allow yourself a few days to do some reading. Afterwards, you may need to use some extra tools. Then, practice. And last but not least, stay informed.

Here's more on what you need:

A. Knowledge

AdWords™ functionality

About the AdWords™ functionality you can learn first directly at the AdWords™ Learning Center. This is a tutorial that accurately explains every feature of the AdWords™ program. Other resources that Google provides can be found in the Support Center (the link contains a comprehensive list of AdWords™ FAQs).

Where to Find the Right Books

Another category of very helpful resources is what we like to call the “experience sharing” type. Those will help you learn how Google AdWords™ works for the people that use it, as well as tips and tricks they use to improve their results.

Here is our top three:

Although it's not strictly about AdWords™, you should also read Ken Evoy's Make Your Site Sell — it will totally change your perspective on how things work online.

You can read each of these e-books in just two or three hours, so prepare to spend a day or two reading. In case you have more time (and money) on your hands, here is a list of all the AdWords™ e-books available online.

How to Stay Informed

After you've made the first steps in your AdWords™ learning process, you'll need to stay in touch with the changes (and you'd better believe there are a lot of changes that occur). You'd probably want to return to this website and see the latest threads and articles on Google AdWords™ (RSS feed available), so better make it a bookmark. :)

As you've probably noticed, we're quite fond of where-to-find lists, so here is another one, of some discussion groups you'll probably want to become a member of. This is the easiest (cheapest) way to get good, sometimes 100% authorized advice:

B. Practice

Of course, the only way to go, aside from reading and theorizing, is to manage several campaigns yourself for at least a few months, and test various additional solutions (software, online tools, etc.) in order to maximise your skills in advertising with Google AdWords™. You can find almost all of them in our Books and Tools section.

By this time, if you've skimmed through our previous threads, you've learned the basics in setting up and running a Google AdWords™ account. Your job from now on is to get busy either advertising your product or simply promoting others as an affiliate.

C. Getting Recognized by Google

Recently, Google has introduced a new program for AdWords™ users: the “Qualified Google Advertising Professional”. This is a certificate that demonstrates your proficiency in using Google AdWords™.

If you're interested in obtaining this kind of acknowledgment, you have to:

  1. Open an AdWords™ account
  2. Sign up the Google Advertising Professional program
  3. Thoroughly study the lessons in the AdWords™ Learning Center
  4. Register for the online exam ($50)
  5. Take the exam (be correct on at least 75% of your answers).
  6. Get access to your Client Center that will allow you to manage up to 500 AdWords™ accounts (your clients)
  7. Spend a minimum of US $1,000 within a 90 days period (summed up to all accounts)

The good news is that you can attend the exam before you spend $1000 in your accounts. But you'll only get the certificate the moment this sum is completed. You must renew this certification once a year.

  • Not interested? How about hiring an expert to do this AdWords™ thing for you?