Admit it - on more than one occasion you've signed up for a newsletter or purchased a product you didn't really need, just because the offer was that good.

We've all been there and there's a good reason for it. An irresistible offer isn't just a bunch of words, haphazardly thrown together. It's a carefully crafted marketing technique, designed to have you opening your wallet or clicking "Sign Up Now!" before you even know what hit you.

But what makes a offer so irresistible? And how can you utilize these techniques for promoting - and selling - your own products?

First of all, conventional wisdom says to offer visitors something free in exchange for their name and email address, whether it's a free copy of your ebook or access to a "Members Only" area on your site. Offering your visitors a free subscription to your newsletter isn't enough - today's web browsers are far too savvy for that. They'll carefully weigh the threat of spam messages with the benefit your newsletter could provide, and you'll often come up on the losing end.

So you'll need to offer them something of value in order to persuade them to sign up. However, there are still a few caveats with this approach. On the one hand, many marketers argue that this method attracts too many "freebie-seekers" - those people who are only interested in scoring free materials and won't be receptive to your future promotions. Personally, I believe that with the right marketing techniques, it's possible to turn even the biggest cheapskate into a buyer - so don't let this stop you.

In addition, you'll need to demonstrate that your free offer actually has value to the visitor. That means, it needs to be specifically targeted to its audience. A quickly thrown together PLR book on building web sites won't encourage visitors to sign up for your gardening lists.

What's more, you'll likely find that in some niches, offering a free ebook isn't enough to overcome the sign-up barrier. Consumers in fields like internet marketing, weight loss and other highly-competitive niches are so used to receiving free products that you'll need to demonstrate the exceptional value of your offer to get them to sign up.

Author's Bio: 

Would you like to create promotions that sell like crazy? You can -- with Marlon Sanders' Promo Dashboard And the best thing: the dashboard turns it into an (almost) fool-proof paint-by-the-numbers process.

Brought to you by Elisabeth Kuhn and her FREE Internet Marketing Step-by-Step E-Course