IMO “well-designed” is a baseline that is to be expected in any app I use, so in a sense well-designed is not worth anything at all. The utility is the important thing and an app would have to be truly very, very useful to me to be worth $9.99. I’m not sure at this writing what the appCubby apps are, but in terms of utility $9.99 would leave out pretty much any game or one trick pony etc., and would have to be something I use almost every day for a long period of time to be worth it.

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I have yet to read the original article, but if the summation here is correct, this developer might have spent a lot of time just to identify a “sweet spot” of people who are rich enough (or foolish enough?), to pay a high price for his work. If the people likely to need or purchase the app were depicted as a cloud he might be just drawing a circle around the densest part of this cloud. This is not the same thing as saying that this is his audience, or the sum total of folks that need/use the app, or indeed would pay something for it. It’s just a description of the group that would pay what he wants them to pay or who agree with his assessment of the intrinsic worth of the application.

I can see how this is very helpful to him, but I don’t immediately see how this is really helpful for his potential customer base, developers in general or is a particularly deep or insightful analysis.

Have you thought that maybe its not promotion’s fault or the other 99c apps?
How can you blame the other 99c apps? There are comparitively very few 99c tracker apps, there are way more fart apps, and they seem to be selling very well.

SO the only conclusion, maybe very few people are interested in milage/budget trackers? I really dont care how much my car guzzles.

So now you gotta think, keep the price point at 10 bucks, or lower it to 99c and try to get those impulse buyers who really wouldnt use your app in the first place to click the buy button.

Theres only so much promotion can do… you keep blaming promotion, apple not putting your app in the hot list, magz not reporting and sales go down, well duh…
Thats why you pay for them.
And thats why sometimes cruddy product sells.

What I suggest is, instead of putting more money, complaining and mulling over these tracker app, go make a game, or make a fart app…
Which brings me to the other concept of marketing, the 4Cs…
one of them is CUSTOMER…

Find out what your customer wants!