I used to do SEO for a Samsung mobile support site. We rarely use anything monetary in an effort to up our traffic. After a few months, we went from 30 unique per day to a few hundred per day. And by the time I left the company in a year, we are about 3000 unique visitor per day.

It definitely takes some effort to build good content alongside some SEO attributes. Just need patience (& Googling good ways to help things along).

I won't recommend going with a SEO firm, let alone $200/month.