If you buy links, and want to be in the game long term, limit your footer and sidebar links as they are easily tagged as paid links by the SEs. Also, think relevance not PR when looking for links.
Google dropped its PR to 0 for selling links. Getting your site associated with sites selling links will indeed get your PageRank penalised. Try buying links from sites related to your market,
well you don't have to pay for traffic.Just ask people to stumble your website.When it comes to pageranki you can submit to directories in my signature.