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There’s been a lot of bitching lately about the Top 100 list and $0.99 apps and I’m sick of it. The way to make a successful app is conceptually very simple.

A. Create a quality product
B. Price the product properly
C. Market the product

It’s the AppStore’s twisted version of the Project Triangle. Each of the corners of the triangle has an effect on the other two. Let’s focus on Price and Marketing.

With a low Price per unit you can’t afford to spend as much on Marketing per customer. I doubt very much that a $0.99 is going to spend tons of money on a Google Adwords campaign or big expensive banner ads. However, at low Price points, you don’t have to Market as much, since customers are more likely to purchase your product just to try it out. At higher Price points you can afford to spend more to Market to customers, but conversely you have to Market more since its going to take more convincing for people to purchase.

I consider the Top 100 list a form of advertising. You are virtually spending money by pricing a $2 app at $1 to get on that list, whether its worth it or not depends on your app. It is somewhat different than most forms of advertising since your ad money is going straight into the pockets of the consumers (or I suppose never leaving their pockets) instead of some middle man.

I don’t feel sorry for any developers on that Top 100 list, chances are even at $0.99 you are making at least $500-1000 per day and that’s pretty good money. There’s not too many other places where you can take an investment of a few hundred bucks and some time and turn it into that kind of money. I’m guessing the median income for an AppStore app is under $20/day, if you are significantly above that there’s not much to complain about.

So stop crying to Apple to change their model and just keep coding. The only thing you can expect Apple to do is to try to maximize their profits. If Apple thinks that the Top 100 list gets them the most money, well then its not going to change regardless of how much you want it to.