I somehow think you are not understanding what I have written.
The services you have looked at are not printing CDR's. CDR's totally different than the type of CD that duplication services that charge about $1 per disk make. Here is a "laymans" description of how these Audio CD's are constructed:
http://www.eil.com/explore/guide/cd_making.asp
Again, the disks you get from these duplicators are much better constructed than a CDR is, and will last MANY more years.
To try to compare the disks you get from professional duplicators to CDR's is like comparing paper towels to a bath towel essentially. They cost more because they are of much higher quality. CDR's are VERY sensitive to scratch's and even when stored in a controlled environment and never played, still only have around a 15 year shelf life for the data stored on them (that 15 years I am sure has a +/- value that varies by up to 50% depending on a number of factors).
So, you don't want to pay for 1000 CD's to be professional made, with their higher quality and longer shelf life, and usually much better sound? Cool, many duplicators offer shorter runs. But, don't expect as good of a deal in the price per disk category. I have found that the price does not drop much below about $2 per disk for short fun CDR's. I have seen it as high as $3.50 per disk for runs of 100. Again, you are paying for a SERVICE, and trying to compare that, with it's built in costs to what you could do it yourself for is, well, silly! I worked at a studio that had a 4 disk duplicator and can tell you that they are not that cheap!!! Throw in labor, material, and just plain old "keep the doors open" cost on top of that and you can start to understand why they charge what they do for short run CDR duplication. You have to keep a LOT of stock on hand, and many of these duplication machines only work well with certain types of media, which is not always as cheap as you find elsewhere.
Anyway. Sounds like you should just duplicate yourself. I am sure that you have seen about as cheap of a price as you are going to find already (I haven't seen prices nation wide vary much at all for this kind of service) and if you feel that is too expensive then probably the ONLY way you will do it for cheaper is to DIY. You can do that on a computer CDR burner at probably up to 8X speed. Let's say you have 40 minutes of music to duplicate. Cool! Only 5 minutes per disk. Let's see.....add in about 30 seconds in between burning disks to pull out the just burned one and put in a new one to burn and start the software (that is IF you are right there when the last burn ends....let's just go ahead and call it 1 minute) so that is really 6 minutes per disk....let's see....times 500 disks....Wow! 3000 minutes....divided by 60 minutes to figure out hours.....50 hours!!! A nice full time job for a week!
Let's see.....CDR's about .25 each. Jewel cases about .60 each (buy bulk!!!). Well, you got a $500 price tag just in materials alone!!!! Now, why don't you go ahead and pay yourself minimum wage for duplicating it..that is fair...
What is it, $6.50 an hour now? Times 50 hours.....$325!!! So, we are at $835 for materials and your time. You only got 500 CDR's, which if you intend to sell to people, they probably won't be too happy that their CDR scratched so easily and doesn't play right in their car system...don't forget that oil on your hands from handling effects the LIFE of a CDR too!!! You also probably got a CDR with a higher number of BLE's (block rate errors......) which is furthered by dropout's that will probably happen when your happy buyer handles the disk, then drops it a few times....etc.......and you still didn't get any printing on the disk either!
Doesn't sound like much of a deal to me! But hey, if you got the time to do it yourself, you save that whole $325 in labor, and maybe you save $50 on materials. Get out those CD label stick on things and make sure that printer cartridge is new, and be VERY careful when you apply the stick on to the CDR so that you don't wrinkle it, or damage the disk in the process.
hmmmmmmm...you will probably have a few bad burns. Maybe a LOT of bad burns if your burner is a cheaper one. So, add maybe 5% in materials to account for this.
Oops....Forgot that you have to have a computer, a CDR burner, and software. Let's say that your burner can burn maybe 3000 disks in it's life (I don't have any figures as to how many they are capable of burning before they start to not burn right...could be a lot more, or a few less....I DO know that when I try to burn a lot of CDR's on mine, that I have to let the unit rest after about 5 burns. We had a discussion on here about a year ago about why that was....No concensus....But almost everybody who has tried high volume burning experienced this....) So, let's just throw in the price of a NEW burner so we can be assured that the thing will make it through this all week ordeal of burning 500 disks. I'll say $200 for an average burner. You are still up to almost $700 for materials, and with the above mentioned problems with quality.
Some of this post is assuming certain things I realize. I guess what I am trying to say is though that most of these duplication services are charging prices that are pretty fair! The DIY approach to so many units is really not practical if you are only going to do this maybe once a year or less. Also, if you are selling the product, I don't think CDR's are the way to go. It is more about providing a quality product that is in line with what customers expect when they buy a CD with music on it. Imagine the surprise of some people when they find that your CDR won't play in their CD player!!! Not everybody had a player that will play any CDR type, and do you want to take that chance?
I think just under $1 per disk for duplicating is a pretty fair price in light of all this. Most of these services will print orders of 500 too, but the price per unit goes up again for this.
Good luck.
Ed