just stay away from these words
"SPONSORS, PARTNERS, FEATURED, ADVERTISERS, ADS"
and more
"RELATED SITES, COOL SITES, RESOURCES, ALTERNATIVE LINKS"
read more http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/
there's more to it than meets the eye.
Don't care too much for that paid links thing. Actually, if you read Google webmaster guidelines they recommend that you submit your site to relevant web directories such as Yahoo Directory which is a paid listing/link.