I think 18K$/year in exchange for tools to make writers life easier are always a good deal. I prefer this x100 times before paying for sponsored tweets/videos for ~300$ or more in Twitter/youtube. In the long term, we'll thank much more organic growth rather than 'artificial spikes'. Some SEM isn't bad though (no idea in the SEM field btw, some in the SEO).

User/writer retention is key, and I think that 18K isn't 'that big' if we're going to profit massively from these tools (the content optimization tool is slick).

Obviously, I'll be using these tools to improve my content! :)