It is true that it is not easy, but its also important to put things in perspective as well. We are not some elite team of professionals. I had no previous experience before touching stencyl, I was just an obsessive mobile gaming fan.
This is my first game
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/20074 it was great fun learned a lot from it, its not great though. This was 3 years ago.
I then had an attempt to make some money from games, so tried some flash games. I learned really quickly that Art is the key, you really won't get anywhere without decent art. It doesn't have to be professional standard, it just has to be clean and consistent.
This is the first game I Sold
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/22321 got $250, Since I'm terrible at art I made the art very basic, icon based. This was the last time I did the art myself.
As I started working with pixel artists the money earned on my games went up, First on the flash games with Fabian and then onto mobile with Folmer.
Mobile has worked for us because we have been consistent, reasonably fun games, (sometimes even really fun) with clean polished art. First game didn't get featured, second one got a minor feature, third one got a bigger feature etc. It was a process. We build our games in a way that give them every chance to get the apple features.