To broaden my skill set I wanted to learn how to advertise with Google Adwords. I had been following a course from Armand Morin and wanted to put what I learned in practice. So, I set up an account with one of those free $75 coupons. It was not a happy experience. I ended up with a permanently suspended account even though no ads ever ran (zero impressions, zero clicks).

Perhaps I was just plain stupid in deciding to advertise via my Clickbank affiliate link. I had heard that most affiliates had abandoned Google PPC due to the strict quality guidelines and that it was very hard to get an ad approved. But I didn’t have a suitable landing page to advertise. And for my learning purposes, if none of my ads were approved I could live with that. Just the exercise in setting up a campaign would be useful. Apparently this was a fatal mistake.