Question on  Affiliate Links

Would it be a good idea to place an affiliate link in the article body, pre-article introduction post article addition?

 

If it fits into the context of the article, why not.  The only down side of doing this is if you have 100 articles, and an affiliate link on all 100 pages, you need to check 100 links regularly to make sure the link has not been changed by the merchant.  For Clickbank products this is less of a problem, but for the main networks, I would not recommend this approach since links are changed regularly by merchants without much thought for the poor affiliates.