Forum Moderators: skibum
For what it's worth, I've got about half a dozen standing affiliate links in the right margin on several thousand pages, and my nearly two-year-old site has always done very well in Google.
The programs I manage have many affiliates getting outstanding results on Google using well placed, well thought text links. Don't overuse, but use several text links that relate to the keywords your site/and the program is about. Make sure you have plenty of other good relevant content too.
Go for it.
[edited by: Drastic at 6:14 pm (utc) on Sep. 16, 2003]
[edit reason] no sigs please [/edit]