Noob affiliate question

[sparky]

I am new when it comes to affiliates and the way they work. I have been reading on the net about the pros and cons and basically how to pick the right one. The one affiliate that I am looking strongly towards, once I am set up with them, I would have sponsored links that appear on sites like bizrate, shopping.com, lowpriceshopping.com, etc. Being my site is a retail sales site brings up a few questions. I have read, and believe also told by someone on this forum, that affiliate links do not hurt or help your site in link popularity. I do not have a firm understanding of this because I cannot grasp why wouldn't the links that appear under the sponsored listings count towards my link popularity? Also I have read in numerous places on the net that some search engines like Google penalize you for paid links. Wouldn't these sponsored links count as paid links? If some kind person can try and shed some light on this, it would deeply be appreciated. Most of my competitors are using some sort of affiliate and if I don't keep up with what my competition is doing, I am going to end up being out of the game. But I don't want to shoot myself in the foot either.

[infinity22]

i think you will get answer from seo forum instead of affiliate forum.