aren't there a ton of affiliates out there competing as well to be on your site for you to keep your costs down?

how do you mean? It seems like the question is cut off or something. Maybe I'm just not understanding what you're asking.

As well as non-affiliates that compete to be on your site. These drive costs down about 1.25x more than the stupid affiliates.

I wonder if the question was along the lines of other companies like your own (or my own) that come to me and want to place ads on my business website.

If that is the question, I think my answer would be no since then I am just giving my traffic to another company...

Could be - my answer would also be no.

Depends on whom you're competing with.

While I don't have banners for a competing host on our site, if users are looking for a windows platform or something that we do not offer, we give the recommendations of places that we have used ourselves. Same with users that want to operate a shared SSL for hosting. We have a competing host for the same product that we sell and we send the clients to them.

Over the years the two hosting companies have traded customers back and forth a number of times. The relationship works out pretty well actually.

As far as putting put a banner for something like host monster or other large host, not a chance. But then I won't post a link on our busienss site that is a service that we do not or have not used personally. Our name and reputation goes on it, so we're very careful about recommendations in that regard.