Originally Posted by will76

You say "not organic, that would be SEO". Really what is the difference. The person who did SEO spent time and money to get listed in the SE to try to get "YOUR" traffic (<- term sarastically used). Ok what if it wasn't a "review" site but a site/page created mainly to get good rankings in the se for your terms like a landing page. The person who uses PPC still spends time and money to go after "YOUR" traffic very similar to how people go after "YOUR" traffic from SEO.

It seems to me from your post at least, you just don't want someone "above" you. What if your site wasn't listed #1 in google. What if you were listed #3 and since I am such a good SEO guy I got listed #1... would you care then if someone had a paid ad on top of me, would it really be any different to you?

Your problem shouldn't be with your affiliates bidding on your terms, it should be with google allowing people to do paid ads. You have 2 options, trade mark the names you don't want people to pay to advertise, or try to get google to stop offering PPC. Good luck on the last one, not like you can really complain much since you get free traffic from google. Remember, you can ask your affiliates to not do it, but you can't stop your competitors from doing it unless you trademark and sue.

I think I would just encourage all my affiliates to pay out of pocket to blast my site everywhere and I would be happy capturing all the sales and splitting the money with them then losing some sales and making nothing.