To get your readers to respond to your affiliate offers you need to ask them to do so. Trying to get your readers to buy or subscribe to your offer is called “pitching”. Example: “This offer is only available to you through this link and for a limited time only. Buy it today!”. Sounds like a pushy sales pitch, but it clearly demonstrates the pitching.
There are two types of pitching that you need to know as an affiliate: soft and hard pitching.
A hard pitch is like the example above. You are telling your readers that they have to buy the product or service that you are recommending through your link by generating urgency (limited time) and scarcity (only available through this link). It would be a lie of course if it’s not, but you can offer a complementing bonus and make it available to those who buy from your link only within a certain time frame.
In the hard pitch you are directing your readers to what you want them to do very bluntly.
In the soft pitch, on the other hand, you can use all psychological tricks like the urgency and scarcity but without pushing. Example: “This had been a problem that got me to stay up every night until I found this product and since then my life changed and my problem has been solved. You too can do the same, here is the link to get one like mine.”
So, you are not directly asking your readers to buy the product you are promoting. Instead you are giving them reasons to consider buying it on their own.
There is no rule to when to use a hard pitch and when to use a soft one, at least until the time of writing this article. So you have to test both and see which one will generate more sales.
So far your blog should have at least 5 articles each one is answering a question that your product provides an answer for. These articles provide the content that search engines are looking for. Link to each one of them from at least one article published on ezinearticles.com and/or squidoo lens.
By adding the pitch post (term courtesy: Amish Shah) you are giving your readers a reason to consider, and maybe buy your product. Now it’s time to link to this post and drive traffic to it.
Start with linking to this post from all of the other posts on your blog. Internal linking is very important, and it’s under your control. Do that first then start writing articles and building squidoo lenses and hubpages and link back to both the home page and the pitch post from each article you publish on other people’s sites.