I am curious about what your ARPU (Average Revenues Per User) for your apps are?

You can get this number by dividing your revenue with your total downloads.

I have heard that for it to make sense to aquire new users with marketing your cost for aquiring one user should be less then what your average revenue income for one user is (Your ARPU). I just don't see how this is possible though, at least with my numbers.

When I count out my ARPU I get at best about $0.1.

But aquiring a user often cost about $1..

Have anyone been able to get higher ARPU or what is your number?

I think it's very difficult to pay for advertising and get your money back, unless you can spend enough to pass some critical point where it makes sense, probably in the range of $1M or more if you're not previously known, which is why it only works for big businesses. I also think it requires a collection of several apps, to increase the possible revenue per user (as it's more likely that someone liking one of your apps will download another).

$0.00

I have many different mods and plugins floating around - all of them free.

I cannot discuss numbers because of NDA, but they are much higher.

It takes time, effort, and money to develop a brand.

Bringing in those first big customers is not easy or cheap. It is the opposite of that: it is difficult and expensive.

You mention ARPU, which is just one stat. There are so many to monitor, DAU (Daily Active users), MAU (Monthly Active Users), PU (Paying Users), ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User), etc. It is also good to monitor where in the pipeline people get stuck. Do they visit the site and never log in? Do they log in but not look at purchase options? Do they look over any products? Which products do they look over? Do they put products in their basket but not complete a sale?

Good ways to increase paying users is to constantly be adding new content, and making sure that fresh stuff is kept at the top of the list. If you haven't launched anything new, show them stuff from the old catalog they haven't seen recently.

Another good way is to develop relationships with your customers. Forum users tend to be more active in the community, and if you can occasionally say 'thanks for your contribution" in the forums coupled with a private key slipped through a private message, it can help drive many sales. We also found it is useful to establish a "gifting" system where people can buy products and give them to others. The whales (customers who spend a lot of money) tend to buy a bunch and give them away to all their friends. The friends talk about it, thank the person publicly, all the while increasing sales.

Moving you to our Business & Law forum -- please try to stop posting all your on-topic questions in our off-topic forum!

When I count out my ARPU I get at best about $0.1.
But aquiring a user often cost about $1..

Mines are higher, but I can't discuss specifics.

That being said, user acquisition at 1$ is a poor metric to look into.

At "worse", I've done 0.25 per user acquisition in the "early days", but have come to lower that number significantly.

Consider more word of mouth, twitter, etc.

I cannot discuss numbers because of NDA, but they are much higher.

It takes time, effort, and money to develop a brand.

Bringing in those first big customers is not easy or cheap. It is the opposite of that: it is difficult and expensive.

You mention ARPU, which is just one stat. There are so many to monitor, DAU (Daily Active users), MAU (Monthly Active Users), PU (Paying Users), ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User), etc. It is also good to monitor where in the pipeline people get stuck. Do they visit the site and never log in? Do they log in but not look at purchase options? Do they look over any products? Which products do they look over? Do they put products in their basket but not complete a sale?

Good ways to increase paying users is to constantly be adding new content, and making sure that fresh stuff is kept at the top of the list. If you haven't launched anything new, show them stuff from the old catalog they haven't seen recently.

Another good way is to develop relationships with your customers. Forum users tend to be more active in the community, and if you can occasionally say 'thanks for your contribution" in the forums coupled with a private key slipped through a private message, it can help drive many sales. We also found it is useful to establish a "gifting" system where people can buy products and give them to others. The whales (customers who spend a lot of money) tend to buy a bunch and give them away to all their friends. The friends talk about it, thank the person publicly, all the while increasing sales.

Are you talking about inapps still? It sounds more like you are talkinga about some site that sells products?

When I count out my ARPU I get at best about $0.1.
But aquiring a user often cost about $1..

Mines are higher, but I can't discuss specifics.

That being said, user acquisition at 1$ is a poor metric to look into.

At "worse", I've done 0.25 per user acquisition in the "early days", but have come to lower that number significantly.

Consider more word of mouth, twitter, etc.

Where do you find marketing that can go lower then $0.2 for a user? (Pay per install)

Conventionl marketing is a dying business. Cross-promotion is one way but it assumes you already have traffic.
I am affraid I can't disclose acquisition methods employed here as this is considered trade secrets.
That being said, as far as 5 years ago, I had conventional ads with a user acquisition cost below $0,2.
Of course, things like Facebook ads were working well.

Note: these models are not infinitely scalable, obviously!

Are you talking about inapps still? It sounds more like you are talkinga about some site that sells products?

Both. I spent several years developing objects for the Sims Store. Limiting yourself to just in-app purchase or to just web purchase is unnecessary. For only a small amount of extra work you can do both. Well, usually. It can be difficult on mobile because of requirements to go through their store and the inability to issue keys. But you didn't specify mobile in your question.

They are available as in-app purchase. Internally it visits the web store, posts some data, downloads, and installs the content.

They are also available as website based purchases. These can be added to your account directly through the web site, or where you can click a URL with a media type registered to open the installer app, and they are auto-detected when you log in (usually automatically) through the app.

As a bonus, they are also available to purchase as a single use software key that can be consumed by adding the object to your account. You can either buy them as a key specifically, or if you purchase multiple items either intentionally or accidentally the duplicates appear as a key that can be given away rather than as a duplicate DLC instance.

Under the hood all of these boil down to some authenticated HTTP transactions for a purchase and the game client looking up values in game to see what items are authorized.

Provide your customers many different ways to give you money.