Website leads?

Go for organic results.  I blew tons of money on PPC for years before getting serious.  With AR alone I am on the front pages of most search terms here.  Cheers!

i do not use ppc, however, i do get a number of leads from AR.

Don't listen to people that have only done this with one website first of all - and are not Google and Yahoo professionals - mostly they don't really know how to construct effective ads that have a high quality ranking - nor even know what that means.

PPC can be effective if done properly, and if you don;t know what you are doing, then do not do it because you will get squashed by the pro's out there that do know what they are doing because they have been doing if for years and have done extensive training on how to max the ROI from PPC campaigns. Eessentially be throwing your money at the wind and hoping something catches.

It is also impossible to say how much to spend since there are so many variables such as the level of competition in your local market - the quality of your website (leading to conversion rates of visitors to registrations), budget, etc.  IF you do decide to do PPC on your own, make sure you thoroughly read the instructions set forth by Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing (or MSN) prior to building campaigns - and if your budget is low, use the ad scheduler to only run the ads at set times during the day.

I agree that organic is ultimately where you want to be ranked.

I don't do this and I am getting plenty of leads from my site. I have gotten numerous calls pitching this to me, but none of them seem worth the bang for the buck. As far as converting your site from deadspace to business generating, in my case it has been all about original content and my podcast.    

I agree with Jeff go for organic leads.  Content is KING, provide lots of good content and you will work your way up in the search engines.  My website is an ongoing work in progress.