Your best bet is to just pick up a cheap hosting account, I think GoDaddy has em starting at 3.99 or where ever you feel is best. I wouldn't go with free hosting though.

You don't necessarily sell only 297 backlinks for $297 I believe. You're placing a value of $1 per link for your customer, that value could be whatever you decide it to be. Many SEO companies will only submit to something gay like 50 directories for $40 bucks - that doesn't even mean that your site will get accepted and given a link. You can do this on your own with a submitter - but it's so damn tedious!

If you use software like PromoSoft, you can submit to over 800 sites on autopilot, which should hopefully get you at least 297 backlinks. I just picked up PromoSoft for a year, no sense in trying to find a crack, I been at it for almost a week.

All you basically need from your client is just their URL and whatever keyword they want to rank for. All you're looking to do is give them those backlinks by creating software and submitting them to software directories.

I personally wouldn't "tell" them what keyword to go for, just let them pick - and if they want more input from you, you can also charge an extra fee for "consultation" if that's up your alley.