for about $450 (or less), you can get a small mixer, a fairly decent condenser mic with preamp and a copy of n-track studio software - provided that your pc has a decent audio card. You can get decent quality production from that.

Now, just think that the majority of the possible customers probably listen to your production with their $50 boombox, they can't really tell if the CD was recorded from the million dollar studio or your good old sub $1000 PC

..rb