Here I am, making my second post on here.

After being burned by a hacker on Adwords and having limited knowledge of the Google Adwords program but enough to push a business well, I was forced to look at some of Google's procedures such as the one for fraud reporting. This also prompted me to get Adwords qualified.

At first when I looked at it I thought, "couldn't be too much to learn there; I'll breeze the test and all will be done."

Then I looked at the Adwords training center and I got a bit overwhelmed. I decided that if I'm going to get qualified I am going to know everything there is to know. When you take the Google exam, it costs you $50US, and each time you re-sit the test you pay the $50 again.

Day 1. Learning time

It's been a long time since I studied, or so I thought. When I sat down and looked at everything, I realised I'd been basically full time studying for years, learning PHP, MySQL, jQuery, eCommerce, SEO, just to name a few.

As of today, I've made it through two of the nine sections and I'm doing well. I'm taking a massive amount of notes (seven pages so far), and I've also done the quizzes that they provide.

Day 2. More learning

I've finished up section two and four and learnt quite a bit. I thought for a while today that I could just skip ahead because I know it, but then I tried to do the quizzes and failed miserably. I went back to learning bit by bit. By this time, I was up to my twelfth page of notes.

My plan for the next day is to look at the longer part of the learning which goes for around an hour and a half. Ouch! (Though when I see my wife studying accounting, it really makes studying for this seem very small).

The remaining parts are much less time consuming, so I was nearing the home stretch.

3. More learning

Feels like it is never ending but I'm learning a lot of things that I didn't know before, so I'm really glad I did this already regardless of whether I pass or fail. Got through sections five, six and seven today.

Toward the end of the day, am wondering whether to push through and just complete it, but I think I will chill out with my family and hopefully do the last bit of studying and take the test tomorrow. I haven't taken an exam for around fifteen years, so this should be an interesting experience.

Eighteen pages of notes so far. 

Day 4. This is the day

I've still got some learning to do and today's learning focuses on Analytics and managing client accounts. I am on sections eight and nine. It took a bit longer to study today than I'd like, but after lunch I was straight into the exam. 

I paid the $50 and then I started.

I must say that after the first ten questions, I started to get worried. There were no easy ones and I had only 90 minutes to do 109 questions. I had to think hard about the first ten questions. Towards the middle of the test, a lot of the questions were much easier, and you can flag questions you want to get back to later. One of the "questions" didn't actually ask a question at all, so I had to assume what they meant.

By the time I got through all questions, I had about 25 or so flagged with about 10 minutes to spare, so I went through and then tried to look through my notes to find the answers. What I couldn't find I looked up on the learning center text versions.

I had about five flagged items to go when my time ran out.

At the end of the test I got...

92.66%

So now I'm Adwords qualified, which I'm very happy about. I learned a lot this week! Now to catch up on all that work I need to get back to...

Ace Web Design - Now adwords Qualified :)