The Affiliate Lifestyle Blog

This question comes from a reader:

hey i see you got certified in adwords and yhaoo and msn, can you tell me how to do this and how hard is it? i just started reading your blog and its very good im going to become an affiliate marketer and i like your tools thanks.

Getting certified requires some time and patience. Currently, I’m a Google Adwords Professional and have Yahoo Platinum status and MSN Premium status.

Becoming a Google Adwords Professional requires that you meet certain requirements, pay $50 dollars, and take a 100 question test in 1 hour 30 minutes with a pass rate of 80% or better.

Even though I’m an advanced Adwords user, I still learned a lot by reviewing what I thought I already knew. I’ve taken the Adwords Professional exam twice: the first time was 2 years ago, and then recently I had to renew my certification.

Tips For Passing the Adwords Professional Exam:

• Study using the learning center. I strongly recommend going through each of the lessons and then taking the quiz.
• Use the text lesson tab, and then click the “Print Section” button.

  The text lessons contain a lot of in depth information and having them printed out helps a lot. Review the multimedia lessons before going into the text lessons because there’s information in the text lessons that’s not on the test.

• The test is online and open-book. So load up a web browser with multiple tabs: in the first tab, log into your Adwords interface, the second tab should be the Adwords learning center, and the third tab should be the Adwords text lessons Print page (which contains the entire page of all the lesson material). You can use the third tab to quickly do a Search->Find through all the lessons. (Just remember that the text lessons differ from the multimedia lessons and Google usually bases its questions on the multimedia learning center).
• Before taking the test, you should manage your own campaigns and get a feel of the Adwords interface. Try to use the different features, such as the Reporting functions.
• Make sure you have a good understanding of how the Quality Score works. That will definitely be on the test!
• Ensure your internet connection and your computer are working properly. If you start taking the test and get disconnected from the internet, the test will continue to run and you will not be given any extra time.
• Make use of the Adwords custom search engine to review for the test. Have it loaded as a tab in your browser when taking the test.
• Since there are over 100 questions, budget your time by answering the questions you know first. You can mark the questions that you have trouble with and come back to them later.

I have not yet taken the Yahoo Ambassador certification (it’s on my to-do list, I’ve already paid for it!), although I do have Yahoo Platinum status due to my client’s monthly budget spending. With Platinum status, you have access to a Yahoo representative who can help with PPC optimizations of campaigns and provides answers to any questions.

Although MSN AdCenter does not yet have a certification exam, I have MSN AdCenter Premium status due to my client’s monthly budget spend. I had to apply for the Premium account, and it was only after a somewhat lengthy review process and some paperwork that I was able to get it. With MSN Premium status, I have access to the MSN API.

Good luck!

-Joshua

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 11:35 am and is filed under Adwords, Q and A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.