Having been successfully running my own Adwords campaigns for 5 years now, I am considering opening, creating and managing Adwords campaigns for some of my clients. I see that Google has something called the My Client Centre (MCC) to facilitate running multiple accounts for clients: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=22815&topic=22832. But you can't open one till you qualify as an Adwords Professional. The way that page reads, its not compulsory, and it is perfectly legal to set up individual accounts for clients if we choose. Could someone confirm that this is correct? I don't currently have the time to go the 'professional' route. Thanks, db
You do not have to pass the Google Advertising Professionals Program for this account, visit: http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwords/myclientcenter/ click on "Sign Up Now" and follow the instructions...
That's correct. If your budget is 1k+ a month for 3 months you can always just take the test and pay the 50 bucks to become a Google Adwords Qualified Individual...that looks really professional if your going to be soliciting your service. I would highly recommend doing that.
Agree, if you are thinking of offering your services, it gives more credibility to have passed the exam - there is also an adspend amount that you have to have reached if I recall. I went this route a few years ago when I was in the same situation as you - it allows you to use the Google Qualified Adwords Individual logo on your website as well.
You don't have to pass the exam to open MMC. Yes it is legal (in compliance with Adwords TOS) to set up individual account for clients, that is the purpose of MMC. Just bare in mind that you cannot manage two accounts with same keywords. You can, but only one ad from your MMC will be shown. That is protection from possible abuse of MMC in order to show more than one of your ads on one search listing.
Thanks guys. My spend has been considerably higher than 1K per month (and that's UK pounds, not US dollars) for years, although it has taken a big dive in the last couple months due to the economic problems. Hence considering this new revenue stream. So I will take your advice and do the test for Pro Individual status. Can you give any idea of what to charge clients? We set them up as new businesses so their budget will be low. Keyword, and ad text, research for individual clients will not really be necessary, as they all will be in the same line of business. Only the locations will differ, which means inserting town names into the kwd phrases and ads. I could set up each campaign in less than 1 hour start to finish, and ongoing management would be minimal. Many thanks, db.
There are three main pricing models ad agency usually use for managing ppc campaigns: - price per hour - time spend managing ppc account - percentage of an account spend - percentage of sales resulted from ppc traffic I find third the best option in cases when it can be properly tracked.
since you mentioned that their budgets would be low.. I would suggest that the best option for you is to charge by hour and if they don't pay competitive rates then you can ask an additional %age of their sales. I had a client once who paid a low monthly rate but my contract stated that I would get 5% of each sale made beyond 20 sales.. and 10% of each sale made beyond 30 .. we stayed well above 30 for most of the months.. what I am trying to say do some homework on how much its going to cost your and get creative with your offer's.
You don't have to pass the exam to run mmc. I have mmc account and I haven't even tried to pass the exam.
same here. I have an mmc account and haven't taken the time to do the exam yet. good to know about clients having the same keywords though. So, if I were managing accounts for, say, a couple of local real estate agents I may have an issue there. I'm not yet but who knows?
> Just bare in mind that you cannot manage two accounts with same keywords. You can, but only one ad from your MMC will be shown. I'm not sure if that's true. Same keywords in one account yes, only one will show. But from an MCC? I avoid this anyway by not having two clients competing against each other in same niche. Having clients in real estate is OK as long as they are targeting different cities.
I had this one answered by google support some time back and here is what they said: "Thank you for your email. I see you would like to know if you can add another client account to your MCC with similar or same keywords. I am happy to say that you can have two or more client accounts with same or similar keywords running in them. Even though they are managed by the same MCC, they still will be considered as individual accounts and will be allowed to use the same keywords. However, note that if the two client accounts belong to one advertiser or company, then they will be linked and only one ad from both the accounts will be displayed. As long as they are different entities, you can use similar or even same keywords in them."
Thanks for posting this. I guess my info is older than that. When I started MMC I wasn't able to show ads with same keywords from two different accounts on one search listing, although they belong to the different company.
Exam: I studied to pass the exam but never did it but I should take the time to do it. Keywords: I have been using some of the same keywords for 2 clients for the last two years and never had any problem.
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