Abstract:

This paper presents an example of e-learning platform application in vocational and professional education focused on income generation, particularly from external entities, which are not participants of the courses. Commercial forms of education allow the use of diversified advertising content. Spread of mobile devices and intensification of wireless internet range removed location barriers that have been significant brake on development of e-learning and blended learning tools.

In the first part of the article an overview of available internet marketing tools to enable the generation of revenue from advertisements has been presented. Several examples of solutions applied in commercial courses in e-learning system have been described.

In the second part of the paper a case study that contains detailed analysis of the potential benefits of using a specific set of modules for distance learning systems has been described. Their appropriate parameterization and adaptation to external standards of marketing services enabled to gain direct and indirect revenues without the need to charge platform users for access to the courses.

The third part of the article discusses the legal aspects, copyright issues and the potential risks that involve content sharing in the internet. Calculation of course preparation costs and potential revenues from marketing activities in certain modules allowed to draw a number of conclusions that have been collected as a recommendation for e-learning courses authors.

Current experience with implemented solutions allowed to conclude that the appropriate selection of popular marketing tools make possible the generation of sufficient revenue level. In this case it is justified to resign from access fee for platform courses users. However, it is very important to publish advertising modules very reasonably in the way that they do not interfere with users during the use of e-learning platform.

Keywords:

e-learning, blended learning, hybrid learning, web based learning, adwords, adsense, seo, internet marketing.