Forums › Forums › White Hat SEO › PPC › How did you get into PPC and what did you do beforehand? Did you go to college for Marketing, go for something else or no college at all? › Reply To: How did you get into PPC and what did you do beforehand? Did you go to college for Marketing, go for something else or no college at all?

  • coffeeconcierge

    Guest
    September 13, 2020 at 5:52 am

    Here’s my long story:

    I did a double major in economics and psychology in college, and figured getting into advertising might be a good way to turn those areas of study into a career.

    Since I graduated at the height of the Great Recession, I had to break into the industry with a lot of informational interviews/networking and ultimately, taking an unpaid internship (I can’t believe those used to be considered ok!).

    This unpaid internship was where I was first exposed to the world of PPC. It was hard to keep up with all the industry jargon (and acronyms), and frankly, it bored me to tears. I remember taking the adwords certification exam (which for some reason was a big deal to the agency), and failing because I cared so little about studying for it.

    After 3 months I left the internship cuz I was tired of commuting two hours a day to only do occasional keyword research and make stupid graphs in excel for people barely my senior.

    Living at home, with no job, and no clue what I was gonna do to make a living, my mom (a clinical psychologist) mentioned she needed to get more clients, as well as a website.

    So with my extremely limited web development skills and ppc skills, I built her a simple WYSIWYG website on google sites, and start promoting it using Google Ads.

    She got a bunch of new clients, and from there, my ppc career began.

    Ironically, to this day I haven’t spent a single penny on Google Ads (or any ppc Ads) to grow my small agency. I’ve gotten all of my business from referrals (partnerships and clients) and Elance (which is now Upwork).

    One decade later I now have a nice small client load and I’m making good money for working really reasonable hours. I work about 24-30hrs a week. Many Friday’s I only spend doing admin work or take off entirely.

    My business is 100% remote, which is definitely one of the things I’ve always been the most thankful for.

    TL;DR mostly self-taught, had the privilege to live at home while I built my skills and client base during the Great Recession, now own a pretty successful small agency