That macrumors story is pretty misleading. Its true, you won't make a living selling gimmick apps on the Mac. But you can make a living selling actually useful software (at a higher price point). The top selling charts are irrelevant.
You missed the point. The point isn't that you can't make a living selling a gimmick app.
The point is that 94 units with $452 in sales makes you eighth top paid app.
So, unless you are top 10, as a developer you can expect a maximum revenue in a year of $120,000. IF you can make that EVERY DAY ... and you can stay in the Top 10 ... and you can't. And Apple takes $40K of it.
And most people will never break the top 10.
I knew things were bad, but that's disgustingly bad.
The top paid chart is irrelevant on the Mac App Store, because it's mostly filled with $.99 super-niche or throwaway apps. The bread and butter of the Mac App Store is low volume, higher cost apps. The dynamics are totally different compared to iOS/Android. At higher price points, say $19.99 or $29.99, 94 units per day is more than enough to make a living.
The problem is no-one is going to pay that much money for an app that lets you add black boxes to an image. You have to deliver real value worth paying for. Think apps like Day One, Transmit, DaisyDisk, 1Password, Reeder.
Moreover, your numbers are off, you don't need to be anywhere near the top 10 to make over $120,000/year. In fact, you can be well outside the top 100 if your per-unit price is high enough.
