Setting up a Google AdWords My Client Center (MCC) can be a real pain in the rear, especially if you already have Google AdWords assigned to your Google email account.  You will find this post particularly useful if you manage multiple Google AdWords accounts for yourself and for others.  When I set up My Client Center, I found that there were not enough step-by-step and easy to follow guides and sources of information available on the web.

After spending at minimum a few hours each of the past two of three days, I have finally learned to set this up the right way.  I hope to show this to you in a clear and understandable step by step guide. The reason is that I just did not find anything that showed all the steps in an understandable manner.  Google Help Center was only half-useful.  Other websites were usually also at most somewhat helpful.

I hope that you will find this post resourceful when setting up My Client Center. Hopefully, you will not have to spend two or three days to figure everything out because I have laid out everything for you.

This post will be particularly useful for those who have multiple accounts and/or who are doing for other people a some sort of management or consulting services, such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), conversion improvement, affiliate marketing, etc.

Setting Up Google AdWords My Client Center - Step by Step Guide

Before we get started: Do you have a need for My Client Center

My Client Center (MCC) allows for management of multiple AdWords accounts from a single login.  This can be real handy and save you tons of time from having to log in and out each time you want to view each of your accounts.  Additionally, you only have to create unique reports once instead of having to do so for each of your accounts.

• Do you have a need to manage multiple AdWord accounts?
  • If YES, please continue.
  • If NO, then you probably do not need to go through the hassle of setting up My Client Center.  Congratulations!

Some Tips & Notes:

• Use two separate browsers, so you don't have to log out & log back in a billion times
• Patience is a virtue.  Some of the changes take up to 24 hours to go through.  This is why sometimes setting up MCC will not work even if you do everything right, especially if you made mistakes along the way.  It took me 3-4 days because I did not have this guide and I made some mistakes.  Taking off AdWords account from the google account to be set up as MCC, for example, may not resolve issues immediately because apparently you may need to wait.  Google instructions are horrible at telling you everything you need to know.
• Those who do set up correctly and believe there could be improvements made to my instructions below, please pitch in.  Send me an email directly at mergen (at) webguru-co(dot)com.

Step One: Planning your MCC setup

• Do you have clients, or will you have the needs to have clients?
  • If YES, please continue.
  • If NO, please skip to Step Two.

Step Two: Free Up Your Favorite Google Mail Account

Because you will want to be able to log into only a single account to manage all of your and/or your clients' AdWords accounts, you want to make sure that your favorite and most frequently used Google Mail Account is free to be assigned to a MCC (and not assigned to any AdWords accounts).

• Do you currently have a Google AdWords account?
  • If YES, please continue
  • If NO, please skip to Step Three.

• The Google Mail account that you use frequently... is it already assigned to a Google AdWords account?  The email account that you will want to assign to MCC is the email account that you use the most frequently.  This email account might be one with all of your emails and/or one with other Google services such as YouTube, Google Analytics, etc tied to it.
  
  • If YES, please continue.  We will need to unassign the Google Mail account from Google AdWords account and assign the
  • If NO, please skip to Step Three

• ACTION STEPS: to free up your favorite Google mail account (This is best done with two different browsers, so that you do not have to log in and log out)
  
  • Create a new Google Mail account
  • Add the new Google account as admin on your existing AdWords account where your favorite Google Mail account is tied up (This is necessary because you cannot turn an AdWords tied Google account into a MCC account).  Do this by clicking on the "invite other users" option to the top left of the "Account Access" page located within "My Accounts".
  • Check the inbox of the new Google account for an automated confirmation email.  Follow the link to confirm the addition of new account as Administrative access.
  • Log into AdWords with the new account and take off your favorite Google mail account from the administrative access.  Click on the "Terminate access".  That is it!  Now, your favorite Google mail account has been freed up.

Step Three: Create a top-level My Client Center

My Client Center (MCC) allows for nested setup where you can have other MCC's within the top-level MCC.  If you have clients and you also need to manage multiple personal AdWords accounts, then nested MCC makes the most sense.  The structure might end up looking like the image at the top of the article where you have a top-level My Client Center and two other MCC's - one for clients and another for your personal accounts.

• ACTION STEPS: to set up My Client Center on your favorite Google Account (If you don't have Google account, you will be prompted to create a new account)
  
  • Make sure you are logged out of Google
  • First, sign up for the Google Advertising Professionals Program - When asked, make sure to enter in the sign in details of your (favorite) Google email account.  If you do not have Google email account, then create one here.
  • Create a new company account under "My Company" tab - This must be different for each MCC.  This does not have to be linked to an actual company.  Just create something that sounds meaningful to you and/or your clients
  • Now, go sign up for Google AdWords My Client Center (if former shows 404 error, also try this link) - There is an option asking you to choose whether this account will be used for managing personal accounts or for managing other people's accounts. 
    
    • If your answer is both, then choose the latter. Complete the step and proceed to Step Four.
    • If you will only be managing your or other people's accounts, then you will not need nested accounts.  Complete this step and skip to Step Five.

Step Four: Creating MCC within MCC - Nested My Client Centers

• Make sure you are logged out of Google
• Create a new Google Mail account - either for managing your accounts or for managing other people's accounts.  If you need both, then go through Step Four (this entire step process) twice.
• Sign up for the Google Advertising Professionals Program - Enter the new Google mail account information.
• Create a new company account under "My Company" - This must be different for each MCC.  This does not have to be linked to an actual company.  Just create something that sounds meaningful to you and/or your clients
• Go sign up for Google AdWords My Client Center
• Now, we need to tie in the nested My Client Centers (MCC's) under the top tier MCC. 
  
  • Log out and sign into Google Adwords homepage with your top-tier MCC account
  • Choose "link existing account" to add your other MCC accounts by their account numbers
  • Approve the administrative access for the top-tier MCC by logging into the lower-tier MCC's and choosing approve option
  • That is it!  You now have a tiered structure just like in the photo above.

Step Five: Completing the setup of your MCC - Tying in AdWords Accounts to "Your" My Client Center

Time has finally come to add your and/or other people's Google AdWords accounts to the MCC(s).

• Log into your top-tier MCC account.
• Drill down to the appropriate lower-tier MCC if necessary
• Choose the "link existing account" to add in Google AdWords accounts
• Make sure to approve the process from the Google AdWords accounts
• You are now all set!!

List of References

Out of 30 plus posts and 10+ website visits, I found these three resources the most useful:

• Start a Google AdWords My Client Center in 2 Easy Steps by Kate Morris
• My Client Center - Google AdWords Learning Center
• Contacting Google AdWords Help

These are some of the other places I visited in search of answers:

• Google search results
• webmasterworld.com - though typically very useful; most of the results were for other issues related to MCC and AdWords