Make Money! Become a Google Adwords Certified Professional! (GACP)
I was surfing the web looking for some info about Google’s Ad-Words program when I came upon a company charging $250 dollars an hour for someone with a GACP certification to set up my advertising campaign. So I said to myself, “what the heck is a GACP?” Turns out GACP or Google Adwords Certified Professional is an exam that Google offers to anyone with an adwords account. Google provides all the training material in both video and text format and the test is taken online for a cost of $50 bucks.
Here is the link to the Google Learning Center.
Here is the link to the Google Advertising Professional Program.
You can become certified as a company or as an individual.
Why Should I Get Certified you ask?
On completion of the exam will be awarded the Qualified Google Advertising Professional Logo, something that looks very good if you are personally involved in a business that uses Adwords. Add it to your resume as a proof or your qualifications, or just take it for yourself. AND did I mention that you can make some serious money with it?
Realistically, the certification will not make you an instant expert in the field of online advertising, but it’s a good place to start. One of the requirements in addition to the exam is you have to manage an adwords account that has spent a minimum of $1000 dollars over the course of 3 months. This seems like a difficult hurtle if you are doing this all by yourself. But I’m guessing that if you pass the exam you could easily find a company willing to take the chance on allowing you to set up their campaign for free (almost like a sponsorship). Advertising online could save a company a significant amount of money over the hiring of marketing employees (who have to be paid benefits in addition to salary). So selling this cert as a service shouldn’t be that hard to do.
Here’s some additional info on the difficulty of the test.
UPDATE: FULL DAY seminars are available in Austin TX for $250 a day.
