Marcus, what kind of courses did you offer and what kind of ads did you use? Adsense, affiliate... I also have that experience, as long as it is not to expensive!
It was a long time ago, and it was Java programming/certification courses. At the time I had a high Google ranking so I figured I could get the audience. In fact the terms java programmer certification still rank my page on page one of Google. Down a bit from when it ranked higher than the inventors of Java. If I was still playing that game I would be offering Android development courses.
I used adsense (in fact I am the maintainer of the Moodle adsense block which I picked up from another developer though it is a long time since I did anything with it).
I figure it is easier to start with a high price and come down/offer a discount than up the price later on.
Thanks for your feedback! So you had a lot of visitors but couldn't get enough money through ads, is that correct? Did you consider other ways to advertise?
I was getting good traffic, but I lacked vigour in promoting the courses. I made much more money by selling subscriptions to an exam quiz database and accompanying PDF book. I did consider other ways to advertise and my advice to you would be go with Ad-Sense as the easy way in but vigorously research alternatives. Also get familiar with Google analytics and/or piwik because much of such work is looking after traffic rather than educating. On balance I am more interested in educating.
In the main two years I was selling that I could have only just bought a modest small car with all the money earned (note that there were several years in the production of the material prior to that). The key to that was probably that at the time of launch it was the only book available on that specific version of the exam and I had built a reputation as the go to person on the subject. Sufficient that real world publishers approached me to co-author books on the topic. The books produced were better for the ego than the bank balance.
Thanks for your input, gave me a little bit more to think about ☺ My original question remains, is there a way to remove ads for paying customers in moodle? Otherwise I will use hikashop in Joomla as suggested earlier.
It depends how you were displaying the ads. There is no ad technology in core Moodle and never will be. You might be able to modify the plugin I mentioned, but that would require programming skills.
Thanks a lot, it seems a bit easier to use a regular payments stem then!