So far you have happened to get answers from people who have invested a lot of money. You do not have to do that to breed snakes. You could start with a normal female and a pastel male and get both of them for under $100 if you bargain hunt (like go to a local show). Or invest just a little more and get a female that will be ready to breed next year if you are in a hurry.
You'll still need to spend more on things like t-stats and enclosures and of course food for the snakes, but all of this can be done relatively economically as well. When your female is big enough to breed, make an incubator out of a styrofoam cooler.
I haven't really done the math, but a quick off the top of my head estimate is that if you start out with a pair of '08 hatchlings, you could probably spend less than $500 spread out over time, and have eggs hatching in '11. Most people put quite a bit more than that into their hobbies (or just going out to movies...), so anyone who really wants to produce some baby snakes should be able to afford it on a small scale.
This is assuming a pretty bare bones operation, and also if you have only one pair there is no guarantee you'll get any eggs at all, but my main point is to illustrate that it can be done quite a bit cheaper than spending thousands of dollars.
EDIT: One more thing is that I don't think you'd make any money doing it this way. But if you hatch a few pastel hatchlings and sell them, that money could help you invest in a few more snakes. Eventually you could build up enough to become profitable (assuming the snake market stays strong enough for anyone to be profitable), without ever having to lay out a big chunk of cash up front.
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