The big problem with email marketing

You can sell almost immediately, Send your onboarding email... then in the next email you can try a gentle soft presell

From there you Identify the problem you are trying to Fix then you provide the fix.

Or if you want long term success you can build a list engage with them and then do promotions later..

I have subscribers coming onto lists that get an offer on day 1 even before they get the first email

I have other lists where they don't get an offer for a few weeks .. either way works..

Do what you feel comfortable with

I can't tell whether you're referring to the case when you have an opt-in on the sales page where your affiliates send traffic to, or if you also want to sell your product yourself and give the emails you used to your affiliates, too.

Anyway, let's talk about both cases.

In case no. 1, your affiliates are probably right: they have (or should have) already established trust, so there's little reason to try to do it again. Instead, you can go for the sale right away - they should be prepared to buy if your affiliates did their job right. If you try to build relationship in this case, you'll lose a lot of prospects that were ready to buy right then - after all, they clicked an affiliate link knowing they'll go to a sales page.

In case no. 2, you should build a relationship first with the prospects in order to have success selling to them - that's because it's a new list, they don't know you, so naturally, they don't really trust your recommendations. You haven't had time to "impress" them enough to be able to pitch them right away.

If you want to kill two birds with one stone and do both, then you can simply just set-up a different landing page for your affiliates, where the emails prospects receive after they opt-in on your sales page are more focused on selling, rather than on relationship building.

You can definitely sell right away. I'm not sure about statistics now, but I believe in any given market there is 5% prospects ready to buy if your sales pitch passes their screening.

So you could target only them and make sales. Like many others do.

With that being said, sure no business can survive without sales, however it is also important to ask do you want to make sale now, or do you want to create long term business.

The answer will dictate the strategy.
Sometimes you may decide to lose a battle, to win a war.

As a consumer I would never wait ten days to by something. I do the appropriate amount of research and than I purchase. I would not spend ten days reading emaisl to make a purchase..... but thst is just me.

If you have an opt-in on your page, I would never be an affiliate for you: Don't like my efforts to get to waste. Don't like making you rich at my expense.