First, make sure you have plenty of sites to promote. Much of this forum is about creating different types of content and sites.

This is the first and most important step. You need "stuff" to promote and the more stuff you have, and the higher quality it is, the better you can find links and promote that stuff. "Stuff" is websites and pages, blogs, lenses, videos, articles, etc. These include your gold sites, some silver sites.

Only after you have enough stuff to actually promote, sign up for the free trial periods of one of these services. Use each FULLY for the time given, then cancel and move on to the next to test its results.

EXPLOIT THE FREE TRIALS OF EACH ONE AT A TIME:

XGenSEO
Download 14 day free trial version
http://www.xgenseo.com/xgendownload.html
Info: http://www.xgenseo.com/xgenseo.html

SENUKE
7 day free trial
http://www.senuke.com/membership/

BRUTE FORCE/EVO
$7 for 7 days
http://www.bruteforceseo.com/

SERP ASSIST
$7 for 7 days
http://www.serpassist.com/

Video Promo

Traffic Geyser
$1 for 21 days
https://secure.trafficgeyser.com/catalog/gyser/21daysi.html

Tube Mogul
Free but limited use per month - still good
http://www.tubemogul.com/about/oneload

Hey Spread
Use after Geyser and your monthly Tube Mogul quota are used up.
"Pay as you go" service
http://heyspread.com/

VideoBot (Desktop software)
See "Incansoft" below

That's two solid months of heavy-duty promo for about $15.

After you've used your trials, consider these options:

ScrapeBox -
$99 but should find a discount if you look.
Can be a blackhat comment spamming tool, but has many more features that make it virtually essential, IMO. Lot of features always added, lots of updates. One time fee.

Icansoft -
$20 per month
http://incansoft.com/Catalog.php
Did you know that if you join the affiliate program for $20 a month, you can download and use all the bots and programs created by Big Mike? Just enter your affiliate ID and the programs will register.

A couple of notes about Icansoft:
-If you cancel your membership, your programs will stop running.

-If you cancel, you can't get back in. But you can always buy the programs you want at a reasonable price.

But still, for $20 a month there's a lot of tools there for you to try out and see if they can add to your marketing mix. Check it out, but only after you've used the trials above.

Bookmarking Demon
$147 One time
http://919929wdl9qzsic6xbpyfbsl27.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=THINKLINKS (My affiliate)
Still a very good program, although success rates are getting lower.

Total spending:
$15 trials
$250 (BMD and Scrapebox)
-----------
$265 one time
+$20 per month Icansoft

You should now be in a situation where you choose one of the services you tested, both finacially and from actual testing and experience.

Pick a program that fits in your your Incansoft, BMD and Scrapebox fuctions.

For example, XGenSEO is really good at creating accounts at this point in time. But Bookmarking Demon has some other options. So use XGenSEO to create and verify accounts, but BMD to actually bookmark those accounts.

Your next expenses should be spent on these:
Content creation
hosting
proxies

Sorry, I can't recommend proxies, but I do think to compete in today's more competitive SEO world you will need access to at least 10 dedicated proxies.

Finally, using free trials where you give your payment details (unless it's Paypal subscriptions) always have the risk of them not really cancelling.

Do due diligence, and even then conditions can change. Calculate your risk vs. gain.