Sales Writing 101: Build Your Kingfin Pitch With the New PASONA Formula 2026

Why does sales writing need a "formula" at all?

"I can write articles — readers just never make it to the sign-up button." For most people starting out with Kingfin affiliate marketing, this wall has nothing to do with writing talent. It's a sequencing problem. Do you open with the product, or with the reader's pain? The same raw material produces completely different reactions depending on the order you put it in.

A sales writing formula is that sequence turned into a blueprint. And it isn't a trade secret of genius copywriters — quite the opposite. A formula is a map of the order in which a reader's mind moves, drawn so anyone can follow it. That's why it helps beginners the most. You don't have to conjure brilliant prose from nothing; fill in each step's blank with your own words and the skeleton of a working pitch is done.

There's a second, underrated benefit: a formula acts as a brake. The more passionate an affiliate pitch gets, the closer it drifts toward dangerous words like "definitely" and "guaranteed." When you write inside a structure — "this part states the problem, this part makes the offer" — there's simply less room for emotion-driven exaggeration to creep in. We covered headlines separately in 10 Article Title Formulas That Make Traders Click; this article focuses on the pitch inside the body.

What is the New PASONA formula — and what do its six steps do?

The most famous sales writing formula in Japan is the PASONA formula. Management consultant Masanori Kanda proposed it in 1999, then published the revised New PASONA formula in his 2016 book Kasegu Kotoba no Hosoku ("The Laws of Words That Earn," Diamond Inc.) — see the book and Kanda's official site.

Pay attention to what changed from the original. The old PASONA's second step was Agitation — digging into the wound to amplify anxiety. In the new version it became Affinity. From "pressure them into buying" to "stand beside them." The fact that the framework's own creator made this update is the clearest evidence that hype-driven copy is no longer the mainstream.

For Kingfin affiliates, this is good news. As we'll see below, hype in financial content can collide with Japan's advertising law. New PASONA is structurally designed to sell without agitating — which makes it the ideal first framework for anyone who wants compliance and conversion in the same sentence.

What does a Kingfin pitch look like in New PASONA?

Enough theory — let's build one. Below is a model text (a writing sample) for the closing section of a blog post aimed at a salaried worker looking for a side hustle. Read each line against its label and watch the six steps do their jobs.

Three things make this work. First, every number in the Offer is a fact. "Free to join," "daily payouts," and "from $10" are all verifiable in Kingfin's published information — and not one yen of income is promised. Second, the Narrowing down step honestly names who it's not for. Disclosing the downside doesn't scare conversions away; it builds the reader's sense that "this writer is honest." Third, there is exactly one Action. Ask for a sign-up, a follow, and a comment all at once, and the reader does none of them.

One rule for the Affinity step: if you write personal experience, it must be real. Fabricating a testimonial is out of the question, and if you describe a simulation, label it explicitly as a model case.

Is that sentence legal? Hype copy "bad examples" and how to fix them

Once you know the formula, learn the words you must never use. Affiliate copy can fall under Japan's Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations. Claims that make something look far better than it is ("misleading quality"), or terms look far more favorable than they are ("misleading advantage"), are violations regardless of your intent. And since October 1, 2023, stealth marketing — hiding that content is an ad — is also a violation (source: Consumer Affairs Agency of Japan).

So how do you fix them? The trick is not to stop being definitive — it's to swap promises for facts. You can't promise "guaranteed earnings," but you can state flatly: "signing up is free, and there's no inventory or purchasing." You can't write "zero risk, ¥300,000 a month," but you can write precisely: "the upfront financial risk is small — though results vary by person and no income is guaranteed." Facts may be stated with full confidence. In fact they should be. Just never promise a future you can't deliver.

Worried that copy without hype reads weak? In practice the opposite happens: exaggerated words raise the reader's guard. You've closed a page yourself the moment you saw "guaranteed profits." Hype only hooks the get-rich-quick crowd — an audience that doesn't stick around after signing up, and under a RevShare model contributes almost nothing long term. Honest copy isn't just legal protection; it's revenue strategy.

When do you use other frameworks — AIDMA and PREP?

New PASONA isn't the only formula worth knowing. Two more belong in your toolkit, so you can pick the right tool for each writing situation.

The first is AIDMA. American advertising specialist Samuel Roland Hall presented it in his 1924 book Retail Advertising and Selling: consumers move through Attention → Interest → Desire → Memory → Action. Rather than a template for one piece of text, AIDMA works best as a blueprint for your entire publishing operation. Win attention and interest on X, build desire and memory with blog articles, then prompt action with the pitch at the end of the article — a clean division of labor.

The second is PREP: Point → Reason → Example → Point. It has no single credited inventor — it's a general business writing structure — and it isn't for selling at all. PREP is the formula for writing each body section clearly. Search visitors want the conclusion first, which makes PREP a natural fit for SEO articles.

Put together: design the overall funnel with AIDMA, write each section with PREP, and switch to New PASONA only for the closing pitch. That three-layer setup is the basic shape of a Kingfin affiliate blog. Don't try to deploy all three at once — start by practicing New PASONA on your pitch sections.

How do you write fact-based copy that converts without hype?

Finally, the raw material that powers your Offer step. A pitch persuades not through adjectives but through the density of verifiable facts. For Kingfin, these are the confirmed facts you can build on:

The writing rules are simple. 1) Use only numbers whose source you can verify. 2) Whenever you touch income figures, add "results vary" and "nothing is guaranteed." 3) Don't hide the uncomfortable parts — no instant cash, results take time. Copy written under these three rules may look modest in the short run, but it compounds through reader trust — and under RevShare, one conversion earned through trust outlasts ten earned through hype.

One more thing: even the best pitch goes unread in the wrong place. Where exactly to position your pitch block inside an article is covered in the link placement and funnel design guide — read it as a companion to this piece.

What should you practice starting today? The first 3 steps

A formula doesn't stick by reading about it. Here's a practice menu cut down to three steps you can start today.

One prerequisite for all of this: understand the thing you're pitching. If the payout structure or the overall path still feels fuzzy, go through the complete guide to getting started with FX affiliate marketing first — your Offer step will suddenly have far more material to draw on.

Sales writing is not a talent contest; it's a repetition skill. With the New PASONA map in hand and nothing but facts for ammunition, write one pitch. Then feel for yourself how copy can be read — and acted on — without a single line of hype.

Written by

Hiro Hiraki

Editor-in-Chief, Kingfin JP. An FX affiliate specialist with over 15 years of financial and FinTech translation experience. Bilingual in Japanese and English.