Hey Jordan,

It will be very challenging to turn a profit with such inexpensive items.

To my mind you have a few options...

1. You can do exactly as you described, but only spend something small (like $5/day) and view it as an investment. You may not make your money back, but you can start dialing things in and growing your audience. Then you can scale up later. This is probably what I would do if I were in your shoes right now.

2. You could create a membership site and sell an annual membership and promise to release a song each year, as well as additional content. This way you could charge $10 - $30 per year, despite not having a full album. However, it is a bit of a commitment because you need to be able to produce enough songs over the next year to provide the content you promised.

Hope that helps.

Prices can vary wildly. And you will find incompetent people that are more than willing to charge you the same amount as competent people. So it's a tough one to put a price on. In my experience, a lot of it comes down to relationships as well. 

I personally pay around $1000 a song. But that is with a producer I have been working with for years and who I have a great relationship with. His normal rate is many times more than that. But I do think you should be able to find an experienced producer willing to work for that. You can find people willing to work for much less, but I really think it pays to find people who are regularly making real records for labels that are getting radio play, etc. Not just independent musicians. That experience tends to be important.