This is perfect timing. I was just writing an article for my affiliates on preselling versus selling.
The reason why many affiliates fail with preselling is that they do not know enough about their visitor so they end up trying to list every product/service feature. Pretty soon they've ended up with a sales letter and their audience feels like they're being pitched to.
Here's an example...
There's a lady in our affiliate program who has a website about home schooling. She is trying to presell one of our web hosting products that helps people build ecommerce websites.
The title of her article was "Build a Website Yourself" and she went on to list all the features of the product. (Yawn!) By the end of the article it was obvious she had basically just reworded the features on the merchant's site.
I told her that she has a HUGE advantage in that she knows a lot about her audience. They are parents with children that are considering homeschooling. Many of them may be stay at home moms like she is.
So I told her to change her title to something like....
"Financial Freedom For Your Family" and then open up with a paragraph like this...
"I decided to take on a little venture of my own while my kids are being homeschooled. So in a sense, me and my children are in school during the day -- except I'm in what I call Site Build It School. And once I graduate, the rewards will be tremendous.... You can do the same and I strongly recommend you try it."
So instead of her just listing the facts about the product she was promoting, she opens her article with her visitor's needs in mind. She's not some random person listing features of an unknown product. She's a mother making a recommendation (not selling) to other parents who also want may want financial freedom for their families. That's the art of preselling.
That's why it's so important you know who your visitors are and what they need. And if you don't know, ask them in your feedback form!
Once I finally got this concept, my sales as an affiliate began skyrocketing. Good luck!