As a website owner, you know that having a site will cost you money. For starters there are the hosting and the domain name to pay for, and if you do not do the design of the site yourself, web design costs need to be considered as well.
To get visitors to your website, you have to do a lot of promoting. Search engine listings can help to get the attention of new prospects. To get a high listing you have a choice on how to do that - do the search engine optimisation (SEO) for your site yourself to ensure that it ends high in the search results, or pay to ensure that your website link is amidst the sponsored links at the pages with results of the search.
Each of these two methods is good to get the results you're looking for. A lot of owners mix the two for the best possible result. They do this themselves - both companies and individuals - so they can save money.
One may wonder if this is the right way to go. If you do the Search engine optimization yourself you keep your money in your pocket. Even if you pay for sponsored links you only pay if people click your link. That is a very nice thought if you are on a tight budget. But what is your goal - not so bad results (by yourself) or (paying for) excellent results?
Answering that question isn't hard. If you work with professionals you are getting more than your money's worth. Their knowledge in this area is way beyond that of website owners. You can expect that their efforts will give you far more than you can ever get with trying to understand Search engine optimisation.
Yes, you will have to pay an expert to do your online marketing. That's why many website owners don't hire a professional, because they don't look ahead and have no vision. Using the services of a professional will get you far better results than struggling with search engines all by yourself. Being penny foolish doesn't pay off in this case.
If you own a website you should ask yourself what your goal is. Saving money on the search engine optimisation - do it yourself. Wanting to make some real money with it - invest in your website and hire an expert to get you results. It takes money to make money…
As said before, it is a simple matter of choosing. If you only look at the costs you haven't much to lose, but not a lot to gain either. If you see the positive outcome of investing in quality work, you can make it and get yourself some results. Which in time means earning money - and that was the whole idea, wasn't it?