On a shoestring project

I am about to bark on a new adventure. Sliotar is taking it reasonably easy in Sliotar terms for the next few months. And I have some time to get working on this project. So here is the basic plan:
I have been planning to record a CD of my own songs for a long while. But always something got on the way. Now it is time to make a plan and put it in to action. I will record a full length album, professional quality, professional packaging, launch the CD and promote it to the best of my ability. I will use what ever resources available to me and what ever I can pick along the way. I will set my self guidelines that I must stick by, and I will set these down in the next few weeks and will take suggestions as well.
I am sure all my musician friends have been there before, especially Independent artists. Where everywhere you turn some one is promising you the moon and the stars for a reasonable price. You know them, Sonicbid and a like, where you need to pay money to submit to festivals, events and so forth. I must point out here that they have introduced some new free services, but still all the real stuff you must pay for. All those people on Myspace who promise you 10000000 dedicated friends... There are rehearsal room fees, studio time, or home recording equipment, musicians fees... unless you have real good and talented friends:-) photos, website, art work, CD mastering, CD replication... And when the CD is finally out, there is the over whelming job of promoting it. Here many artists and record companies spend often even more than the entire above put together. I remember an interview of a well known manager of an Irish boy band, where he told of an concert where the band were starting to let the fame to get in their heads, the manager dragged them out, opened the boot of his car, which was filled with their CD's that he had bought from the shops to boost the sales figures. And I have personal experience where a company over ten years a go offered this service for me, for a fee of course. This is obviously out of reach of my budgets, neither do I have any interest to conduct my business in this way, but it is just an example of how the business works. Now would it not be cool to do all of this in inventive way that would cost as little as possible? And base the success in real CD sale and download figures, concert turn outs and so forth. What do you think?
I will try to do just this, with the help of hopefully some real good friends, some innovative companies and some fresh thinking. And I will keep a record of all the details of this project and share it with the readers of this blog. I will be looking for your opinions and ideas on music and business. Hopefully I will learn a lot on this journey, and share as much of this knowledge as possible with all of you. To keep up to date on this blog, and the release of my CD and any live dates, new videos and stuff please sign up for my mailing list below. Thanks and I will talk to you all soon:-)
J.P. Kallio