Okay, so you want to record but you're daunted by the price. Assuming for a moment that you have nothing to barter (I will trade services for goods or other services, but I can not pay for media with chickens, so that will always have to be cash), what does this really look like, cash-flow-wise?

If your project was an hour long spoken work, it might take, say, 3-5 hours to record it and 10-15 hours to produce the finished product from that. Conservatively, that's 20 hours of studio time. At my current rates, your invoice would be $30/h x 20h = $600.

Now, let's get 100 units made for you to sell at your performances / conferences / office / whatever. These units cost about $3 each in this quantity from a commercial duplication company. $300 paid. You are now out of pocket $900. That's a lot of money, yes.

If you sold your CDs for $15 each, you only need to sell 60 to break even ($15 x 60 = $900). And now that you've broken even, you still have 40 units left you can sell. 40 x $15 = $600 profit to you on your first run. If you sell them all, order another run of 100 ($300). You break even after selling only 20 units (20 x $15 = $300) and you have 80 units left to sell for a potential profit of $1,200 for each batch of 100 you do this way. If you order 1,000 units insted of 100, the unit price goes down and profit goes up.

So, if you plan to sell your finished product for a fair price, your investment in recording services is easily paid back when you sell just over half of your first run! After that, lots of profit for you.

What if you don't have the $900 up front? Well, if you get paid pre-orders from your loyal fans, you can offset the cost significantly that way. You might also ask ten friends to lend you $50 in support of your dream of making a CD, for example. This would reduce your out-of-pocket considerably.

Naturally, all projects are unique, your milage may vary, etc., etc., but you get the idea. It's not insane to think you could actually do this.