How much seo work one can do himself vs paid seo services ?

How much seo work one can do himself vs paid seo services ?

Hi,

When it comes to seo, you can either do it yourself or hire someone like on the seo link building marketplace.

Obviously, the higher your budget, be it you take the right services and have everything else covered (right kw selection, good on site etc), the better your results.

I'm on a budget right now and I can invest more time than money. And I do have plenty of time.

So I'm wondering to what extent one can do seo on a budget, doing it himself.

Many of the seo services provide stuff I feel can be done without outsourcing :

• wiki blasts
  
• blog comments
  
• web 2.0 submissions
  
• tumblr, pligg etc
  
• guest posts
  

I'm not saying it's not a pain though.

Of course, some other tactics require investment :

• Blog networks, SAPE etc
  
• social signals (unless you got outstanding content andan existing audience, in case you don't need seo as much)
  
• and everything else I don't have in mind right now that needs investment (personal high PR blog network for example)
  

So here's my point, or my questions actually :

1 - do you guys have experience doing your seo work yourself ?
2 - did you get good results ?
3 - do you recommend any strategy in particular ?
4 - What tools would you recommend ?