14 hours ago, Hodgman said:

A 0.30 ARPU will deliver a living wage from a successful game. As above, this can involve ads and IAP. 

What kind of ways could be used to increase my ARPU?

Adding in one or two adverts doesn't help much, for the most part things stay the same.

I know clicking on the adverts help, yet asking players to click on adverts goes against the ad publishers contract and can lead to them banning you from using there services.

I know a publisher who was so desperate he hired people to use jail broken phones with many sim cards to click on adverts X times a day. It didn't work for him because the more users clicked the lower the value of each click was.

Then he had to pay the people more money that he made. In the end I felt so bad for him that I agreed to refund him.

Maybe I should try to keep players online more?

Some multiplayer, chat or friend system could help with this. A friend system would be the simplest to insert.

6 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Adding in one or two adverts doesn't help much, for the most part things stay the same.

There's a reason many mobile games relying on pay-to-win mechanics, uncapped cash purchases of in-game currency, severely limit playtime each day for non-paying customers, and aggressively use forced interstitial video ads to frustrate players into purchases...

Making money on free-to-play mobile games without stooping to... what I'd describe as "sleazy" tactics, is not an easy thing.

9 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Adding in one or two adverts doesn't help much, for the most part things stay the same.

As mentioned in another post, it does let you sell a no-ads IAP

It also depends on how/when you show them. A common trend now seems to be opt-in fullscreen video ads, either on a timer in the main menu (e.g. Once per hour to get a prize) or after each level/death/etc (to get a bonus, extra life, etc). Once-per-day bonuses also seem to be a common strategy often a with a phone notification reminding players to open the game and get their bonus (a nudge to help retention). 

These choices won't be arbitrary or devised in advance perfectly for most successful games though. It's common to soft-launch in one territory only and then do lots of A/B testing (use science to find out which variations get best results). New Zealand seems to be a common target as the small population means you don't waste a lot of opportunity, but they still have similar tastes/habits to North America (assuming that's your real target market -- a NZ soft launch won't help you tune the strategy for China). The "AAA Mobile" studios that make millions per month likely  have a lot of people full time on looking at analytics and devising experiments... At any scale you at least want to know why/when people are quitting your game, and whether people are opting in to your bonuses or not. Things like offering a bonus life at the start vs end of a level, or even just the color of a button could potentially be the thing that makes a feature work! 

To get ARPU up though, besides optimizing your ad usage so that people are happy to see a lot of them, you need IAP. Your ARPU for just the IAP-engaged segment can be several dollars, which gets dragged down to a tens of cents average by the freeloaders. 

Loot boxes seem to be the current fad - play the game and watch ads to get coins, spend them on boxes, get prizes... Then directly sell coins/boxes/prizes too. 

As posted above, the most successful games will be very scummy... However I love Crossy Road as an example of a less scummy option - the gameplay is just endless frogger an exist in full out of the box. Collecting coins in black game, opting in to videos, once-per-day bonuses and IAP let you get loot boxes, which give you re-skins of the artwork - no effect on gameplay, but made a huge amount (for an indie dev). It is a little scummy to people who feel the compulsion to unlock everything in that you can't buy prizes directly, just gacha boxes... Flappy bird also just had banner ads on death with no 'scummyness' but made a huge amount (for an indie dev) simply off volume of players.

Getting happy players is the goal.  And yup, ads can get in the way of that. 

You must balance on the line of getting paid vs not getting your app deleted from a players device.

Being smart with the intervals where interstitials are displayed is a good place to start.  Play the game, in a players perspective, is it a good ratio? do you get annoyed? Also, using rewarded video is perfect.  They pay out better + the player chooses to see them. You can reward them with no ads for a short time, or just give a few coins (or whatever).

As a player, I am quick to delete a title if I am inundated with ads, but have no issues with the occasional ad, even banners that aren't in the way.

Good luck with this.  When you are ready to integrate ads, check out how Enhance can help :  https://goo.gl/Y6DyNM

I think rewarded video ads are actually ok , i have seen them implemented in very clever ways in some games where even I watched 5-10 ads in a game session. On the other hand those annoying interstitial or video ads that pop-up in the middle of a game level or 20-50 times per hour get me to uninstall the game.

 I think there is a business model for ads if done right , a lot of games with micro-transactions have the Watch a Video for this reward(balanced usually with the value of an ad: say 10 gems reward when you would get 1000 spending 1 $) but you know the people that click that are less likely to pay , yet they become a revenue stream and chose to watch the ad instead of having an ad shoved down their throats.

11 hours ago, CrazyApplesStudio said:

I think rewarded video ads are actually ok

The problem with rewarded ads is that after the user watches adverts +/-4 times a day, it gives exactly the same payment to the developer. So after the first +/- 4 watches you just end up forcing the player to watch a adverts you won't get paid for.

The only exception is if the user actually clicks on the advert to follow the link.

That means the reason to keep showing adverts, after the first few times, is to purposefully irritate the player or in some hope that this time they will click on it.

 Of course you would irritate people , that is why i said it should be their option to watch the ads. I did not know the 4 adverts thing to be honest but i agree , the target should be for the user to engage and Install an app , as that can pay a lot , imagine if you have a 0.005% conversion rate in your app(of course this is also based on luck and what adverts are shown that day) with say 50.000 DAU , as for example Unity Ads can pay even 1.8 $ as i have read in many places , you would earn 200-400$ from this alone.

  But as i said, you should implement this in a way that does not force the person but instead give them the option and let them chose to watch the ads , there would be no reason for them to be irritated since you do not actually force them. You can also limit the number of adverts people can watch by tailoring your reward system to make the user watch exactly as many adverts as you know you would get paid for , or introduce ad mediation and serve ads from different platforms to mitigate this issue. 

3 hours ago, CrazyApplesStudio said:

I did not know the 4 adverts thing to be honest but i agree ,

Even so your opinion has been very useful. It shows me insight into what people think of adverts.

When making games we often forget that players don't have access to the statistics of the game and this greatly effects how they interpret our actions.

I wonder if players like the idea of adverts as part of the game? Rewarding players for watching adverts definitely makes them feel better about it, but does the fact that the advert contributes to the game have anything to do with it?

Well, i read a lot of materials, and overall all agreed that Rewarded Video ads that users chose to watch are accepted and tolerated by players a lot more , one example give in one of those articles was Crossy Roads that made 300k $ from Rewarded Video ads. You can read an article here if you want more insight :

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/01/13/crossy-road-and-unity-ads/