Decaflon

You are not thinking way too wrong. I am also sometimes concerned about the distraction level of the links. One of the tricks about the links [which I am trying to follow] is to give the links near about the end of your posts or at least far down enough that you have captured the attention of your audience. Here is one such example create a word press theme

There is one more solution that address this problem. You may give a kind of appendix in your application that has links. You link to that appendix .. and appendix links to external sources.

Also this is not a huge concern for bloggers. One of the most important factors in bringing traffic to your blog is by getting traffic from other bloggers. And you cant get any traffic unless you are ready to give yours. If your article has enough strength to keep the reader involved you have little to worry.