What are the going rates for SEO services, for a small site looking for about 4 or 5 competitive keywords? I am of course including the link-building and any project costs, which would be the truly hard part. Are there any SEOs that allow you to pay monthly or weekly for services as they are going on? Or do they all want upfront payment?

Sumantra Roy's company, http://www.1stsearchranking.net/, offers a package for $1500. That sounds too good to be true. Anyone know about this service?

I've heard so many bad things about SEO firms, and the nature of the beast is that they could get you to the top of the rankings and google would drop you down a week later b/c it decided to revert to its old index.