This morning I was setting up a new client in Google Adwords and went to apply one of the 20 NZ$125 promotional codes that Google issued me in October 2009, but I got the error message “sorry, that promotional code has expired”.

I tried the next one on my list, and the next one, and the next one, all with the same result.

I emailed Adwords Help Desk and got a quick reply to tell me ALL 20 of the credits had expired just 6 days ago! Damn!

That’s NZ$2500 worth of free internet advertising I wasted because I didn’t use it! (by the way, each credit can only be applied once to a brand new Adwords account)

If I had any idea they were going to expire so quickly I would have just given them away.

After scouring the internet for people in a similar situation I found the blog article of Hillel Stoler who was giving away his Adwords credits for free. So I applied and he emailed me the code a few minutes ago and it worked! Now I have the credit that I promised my client, fantastic!

So thanks to Hillel for getting me out of a jam

I think he has a few left so if you are in the same situation as me, act fast, and ask for a Google Adwords promotional credit from him on his blog.