be carefull if you do and make sure they have good reps and no bad I traders too, as well as other advices offered are all correct
Buying links is not safe at all. Although you can ask the seller to place "rel=affiliate" in the link ..This will save your site from getting penalized
You don't need to spend money for link exchange. I am a webmaster and I want to make link exchange with you. Not only me, more than thousands of webmasters are always trying to make link exchange to each other. Just follow this link http://www.snobbyweb.com/submit.php and post an offer for link exchange and you'll get real people who's really looking for to make link exchange with other sites. But don't forget to mentioned your site category.
I wouldn't bother buying links if you are trying to improve your search engine rankings, it's against the rules of Google in particular. longcall911 talks a lot of sense, you should listen to him!
check itrader and reputation of the seller don't buy from new memebrs or ask them to put linsk before the payment
You may use services selling forum posts, blog posts, blog comment posts and use the link in text/signatures. This almoust impossible to prove if you was buying this link or not. Drop me a PM if you would like to know some good services.
If you are buying links for traffic then it's safe as the linking website will add the rel='nofollow' tag to the outgoing links and this way is 100% safe for both websites... Otherwise if you are looking to manipulate search engine ranking and boost your own website PR value, then you must consider that any one could and 'in my opinion will' report those paid links if they got a chance to do it... However, Text Link Ads is a good source for advertisers and publisher to get quality links... After all try to get only relevant websites to link to you
As far as I know its only the link selers who are getting penalized for link sales not the buyers, as its impossiable to tell wether its the real site owner who is buying the links, so its unfair to penalize a site for buying link, where as if your selng links it must be the site owner or somebody with FTP access so they are the ones getting hit by Google. The buying and selling of link though is a dodgy subject as a whole we all know Google does not want people selling links unless they use the no follow tag, this way you are buying links simpley as normal advertising trying to get more direct traffic, apposed to trying to trick the search engines into thinking your site is more valuable/important and trying to manipulate SERPS and PR.
You cant buy links unless its for a link in the yahoo directory. Google hates it when webmasters don't use nofollws unless its sites like DMOZ. to me I think Google is a monopoly and its unfair. another reason why something has to happen with Yahoo.