Hi everyone, It looks like this is a phenomenal place to share information and get some advice. Here's my situation - my company is interested in getting into the online e-learning business whereby they would essentially create their own online courses. The inital thought was to charge for courses, but with the big push to make everything "free" on the web, there has been discussion about offering ad-supported courses, whereby through the course would be a combination of banner ads (cpm) or pay per click advertising. The question is if we could make more money with ad-supported courses, versus charging users for it. Because the courses would involve presentation slides and speech, the ads would be placed within the slides themselves. However, the concern is that PPC ads might not be effective since people watching a course might not be willing to click on anything since they are focused on listening to the content. Because of this, CPM seems to be a better choice. Alternatively, "forced video commercials" appearing after some slides could also be an option, though not too many advertising agencies seem to offer this just yet. Do you all think this would be a viable model?
I think you've got some good ideas, and provided that your courses are in demand and of value, I'm sure you can do quite well by monetizing the site. I think it would be virtually impossible to determine whether charging for courses or using advertising would bring in more money - probably the only way for you to get a rough idea would be to look at what your competitors are doing (assuming that this idea isn't so new to your industry that you don't have competitors). As for ad placement, I'd recommend against putting them in slides or using forced video commercials - in my experience, the first will be ignored, and the second will be a source of irritation. I think you're best off just working some advertising in with your main content, and provided you have good traffic and your pages are well targeted (and of course, your keywords have a significant CPC), you should do well. Best of luck. Sam
Sam, I really appreciate the reply and your thoughts. Its difficult to decide whether a fee based or free based with ads model would be better. The biggest problem the Internet faces is complete saturation of content. So from the perspective of substitutes, people can get information from anywhere. The fear is that people might not want to buy educational material in our course format because they feel they could simply read about the topic for free through various articles easily found on the web. What do you mean by working the advertisements into the main content? Given our format, the advertisements would theoretically be placed in slides themselves. Is there perhaps another way to place them into the content? Thanks!
You make some good points, and ask some good questions. As far as whether people will pay for something they can get elsewhere for free, I know for a fact that some people will, if paying takes less time or makes life easier for them - I'm one of 'em. If I have a choice between searching multiple forums for 25 hours, consolidating the information I'm interested in (and weeding out what I'm not interested in), and then assimilating it, OR buying an eBook for $47.00 that accomplishes the same goal and can be read in an hour...I'll buy the eBook. The key is making the overall ROI of "paying" greater than the overall ROI of "free". When I referenced "main content", I made the assumption that your site will have some kind of basic content that introduces the courses, with links to where the courses (and slides) begin. This would typically be found on the home page, but it could be on other pages, as well. This is where I would suggest implementing your ads, as it will be the least-intrusive for your visitors, but will also be viewed by ALL who visit your site. HTH, Sam
make sure that you get a good response with free courses then only go for paid solution other wise it will be bit hard to fetch traffic through organic searches. should opt for paid courses while going for ppc campain.