Restrict PPC completely from Our Affiliate Program

[tycoon7]

Dear Ecommerce owners, need advice from those who run their own affiliate programs.

2 weeks ago we created shareAsale affiliate program, and today notice that some guys started bidding on our KWs and brand.

Since the niche is very small, and we pretty much dominate it PPC wise,
we are thinking to restric PPC affiliates completely. Does it sound right?

Our main goal when creating aff program was finding same niche bloggers, youtube channel owners, etc.

[Essex_boy]

Do they convert better than yours ?

[tycoon7]

No, they do not.

[Essex_boy]

Ban them then !

[not2easy]

Do your terms have any keyword restrictions? If you haven't set any restrictions to joining, they are following your rules. Talk to the network people and find out how to do it correctly. You can easily restrict use of your keywords and display URL, but continue to benefit from others' PPC experience or you can disallow PPC altogether.

[RhinoFish]

In ShareASale (SAS), put it in your terms, AND their area for restricted keywords - system works very well there.

Use Brand Verity to monitor it, or hire a good OPM and let them do the policing.

Affiliate Name PPC really comes in three flavors:
+Direct To Merchant - your affs bidding on your domain name, landing on your site - kill this in the aff channel, very high returning, affiliates add zero value, in fact, they drain value here.
+Indirect - bidding on your name, sending to review sites that feature you - results vary (can raise your in-house Name traffic CPC, but can also squeeze out competitors who bid on your name).
+Name Plus - bidding on Name plus words like coupon (like "bluewidgets.com coupons") - results vary (long discussion, one to have with your OPM).

At SAS, you can see feedback on affiliates from other merchants, a great thing. When approving and reviewing affs, if they have neg feedback, look at it, if it says poaching or bidding on name traffic, know that they do this to many merchants, it's pretty much all they do (most fire them and don't bother leaving feedback).

In Brand Verity, you can review feedback as well, a great tool for policing poachers - most OPMs will do this for you as part of their services.