Hi,
did you know that you need an Atmega328 that is already pre-programmed with the Arduino bootloader? They are sold by most of the usual Arduino hardware sellers.
If you have access to a Hardware Programmer you can do this yourself from the IDE. It has a menu-entry "Burn-botloader". This has to be done only once for each atmega, so its Ok if you just know somebody who has a programmer and is willing to do this for you.
Eberhard