Hi Dave,
Are you sure you visited
our site (LinkSmile.com)?
You may be confusing our site with another site...? If not, then you might want to re-read our content with a little less bias (noting your comment that simply grouped us with other sites in this arena).
No offense intended or taken that you have a different take, but all of our content and every article is explicitly written with traffic in mind --not link popularity or pagerank at all. That is one thing that specifically sets us apart from all the link sellers.
Our publishers can sell banners, non-SEO links, and also standard SEO text links. There are several options -only one of which will help with link popularity.
To be honest, I -personally- care nothing about pagerank. If Google disappeared tomorrow, I would be happier anyway. I look for traffic first, and every article on our site tries to convey the idea of buying traffic as being paramount to buying pagerank.
I mean you must have missed this article linked to right off the homepage:
http://www.linksmile.com/dont-buy-pagerank.htm
-Wesley