Merchants and Networks Linking to Affiliate Sites

This was touched on in another thread, but rather than Hijacking I thought I'd start one.

I am a merchant, I've been thinking for a while perhaps I should set up a page of affiliate sites (not to send traffic just to improve there inward links)

As a merchant the pros are:
Help to persuade new affiliate to join.
Help to get affiliates to put our links up.
Increase the PR of affiliates and hence their ability to send us buying customer <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/embarassed.gif ALT=""> )

But the cons are:
Other rival Joke Shops could quickly see a list of my affiliates, and pinch em.
Maintaining the links might be a pain.

I'm sure there are more Pros and Cons

So what do you lot think, as affiliates.

Personaly feel it is a good idea..It depends how deep in your site you plan (how many levels down from your homepage)

If your homepage has a PR of value X, Then the page of links should either be on this page or one of value (PR = X -1)

Do you consider link exchanges?