1. We've given some poor reviews out, and never been dumped from a program for this reason. As long as you're fair, give good points without trashing them, then I think you'll be ok.
2. If you want to avoid bad reviews, then don't review bad sites. Although soon we'll be reviewing poor sites (where up to now we only review top 10%), most of your signups will go through your top rated sites anyway.
3. Sites without affiliate programs are tricky. Depends how credible you want to be and how "long-term" your thinking is. If you plan on pushing hundreds of reviews, then users will catch on to whether you're hiding top sites from being reviewed. If you want to look unbiased, you must not care about conversions, payouts, etc.... You'll give away some free signups, but in the long run you'll gain more trusted users (and that's key in my opinion).
The trick is to find a way to "limit" the exposure of such sites without altering the score/review. That's one thing we'll be doing on our site.
4. I advise avoiding ads of all kinds when you have a review site. Your bread and butter are the reviews, they are your content and no reason to dillute that. When you add advertising, then you also appear biased to them, regardless of whether you are or not. Go ask AVN and Xbiz!
You can definitely run a successful "and fair" review site, just don't buckle in to the temptations. In the long run, they will cost you. Good luck!
