Your budget is too small to do this digitally.

are you making income doing this now?   Then what are your film and proofing
costs?    What are your package printing costs?

now, figure what your costs would be if you:

eliminated all film and proofing costs.
reduced package printing costs to $2 per 8x10  80 cents per 5x7?

If you subtract the cost of doing business digitally from the cost of the
film, proofs and package prints, I'd bet that you would find that the
difference will not only pay for a decent digital camera, and laptop that
you would need to have with you but your two printers (some folks that shoot
lots of santa, easter bunny, proms and holiday parties say that you need two
printers per shooter or you will fall way behind)   and your total cost for
going digital is not only nothing, you will have more money in your pocket.
The savings could come faster than the credit card statements if you are
busy enough.

So, if you don't have a credit card to dump that start up fees on, then
invest in a decent prosumer camera.   Heck you could go for as cheap as $500
for something in 4 or 5mb like a g2 or 3 or the nikon equivalent.    if you
have some decent lenses for a canon or nikon then look at the 10D or S2
something like that.  check out dpreview.com for point by point reference
and feature comparisons.    so with a couple 512 mb CF cards (this size is
very handy cause you can copy it to a CDr for backup and almost fill it up,
larger cards would require you to save to more than one CD, smaller cards
would mean more thought involved in saving to folders and file number
duplications)   So with a 10d (what 1,600?) a couple cards 2-250$) and then
if you need a lens, well you're getting close to your budget.

what about printer?

consider this, since you are now having to deal with labs, check to see what
digital services they offer, direct to paper service is about $2 per 8x10,
if they don't have that service from ftp internet transfer or off a CD you
deliver, then go to Costco or other type store and print them off their fuji
or noritsu printers which use the same paper as the pro labs do for digital.

otherwise there are some epson and canon printers in the couple hundred to
700 range.

for awhile I was going with lab services cause I could just shoot it, sell
it and forget about it till the package comes back and I deliver it.   Now
I'm torn, there is a wonderful joy of printing out your images, its really
as fun as making your own black and whites in the darkroom, but if I start
doing that I might not have time to BS with all you guys on the boards no
more.

Canon Digital Rebel
Kodak 8500 dye sub.

You're there.

Steve