Affiliate links on my site to my site

an unusual set-up

[mmmwowmmm]

I have a unique affiliate situation, and I’m a little worried about how my unusual set-up may affect the way my site is handled by the search engines. (It’s a little complicated, I’ll try to be as clear as possible)
Here’s the scenario:
My website sells funny widgets. I also have funny articles. The articles are written by my affiliates. Each article has it’s own page. All the links that lead OUT of that article page, to other areas of the site, are encoded with the affiliates link codes. So if a visitor is on that article page, and they click, say, the “home” link, it actually goes to clixgalore (my affiliate tracking service), and then instantly reroutes the visitor to the home page. The same goes for all the other links leading out of that page. The reason I do this is so that these writers will get a commission for each customer that they draw to the site with one of thier articles. What’s unique about it is that the affiliate links are both ON my site, and TO my site. (at least I assume that's unique, I’ve never heard of it before)

The end result is many, many affiliate links on my site. Each page that has an affiliates article has 7 links that lead out of that page and to other parts of the website, and each link is encoded with that affiliates code. This raises a few of questions for me:

Does having so many affiliate links on my website potentially put me at risk for getting penalized, or even banned? If so, does it help that the links lead right back to my own site?

Which raises this question: When a spider comes upon an affiliate link, does it recognize it as such and stop, or does it follow that link to where ever it goes (in my case from my site to clixgalore, then back to my site)

Is having 7 affiliate links on a page worse than having 1 or 2? I could cut the links down to 1 affiliate link on each article page if that would help (assuming it's a problem in the first place).

Is there any way to hide an affiliate link (with javascript or something) without hiding the whole page. (obviously I want these pages indexed)

So that’s my situation. If anyone has any answers, I’d be very greatful - Thanks