Would you pay for SEO Services?

Hi there,

I know there are stacks of companies that can optimise a bunch of keywords for you for a few hundred bucks a month... would you say that this is a good way to go if you have the budget?

I am in a postion where I can not get heavily involved in article marketing due to time restaints so I was thinking:

Outsourcing articles, ads, bookmarking for a few hundred bucks a month and still doing some articles work myself OR

I was thinking for the same money I could employ an SEO body and then add some artilces that I can do myself (about 50 a month) to the formula.

What's your take...just interested to hear people's views on SEO services or peopls experiences if they are doing this at the moment?

Also what I find quite strange is that all my competitors do PPC and wondering why they don't simply pay for some SEO work to try and reach some top spots in organic aswell? I know some are very successful so surely would have budget for this, as PPC is a big cost in itself.

Thanks for reading this and please give me your opinions here.

Cheers.