List building is probably the most important aspect of running your online business. There are several ways of tackling the list building task. Of course, first and foremost, you must have two things in place- your auto responder with several messages and at least one opt-in page. Then you can begin to use the strategies here to build your list.

If you have money, you can always use Pay-Per-Click advertising, particularly if your opt-in page is an advertisement for a product that your visitor will be redirected to after signing in. PPC can be very expensive, though in the beginning when you still don't really know what you're doing yet. There are some other, less expensive ways to handle your list building needs.

When marketing to your opt-in list, you want to develop a certain amount of trust. Trust is what makes a list responsive, so you want to establish this fairly early on. There are two very effective ways to do this. One is by writing articles, and one is by posting in forums. Both are highly effective for getting targeted readers on your newsletter list, which is what I recommend you have because providing a newsletter shows your readers that you are interested in providing quality content rather than just throwing sales pitches at them incessantly (but I'll save email marketing for another time. This is just about list building today).

Posting in forums is a great way to get subscribers to your list within a few weeks' time. In the beginning, you do not want to advertise yourself in the forums. The members will notice that and you've lost their trust from the get-go. A better idea is to take the first two to three weeks to read what they need and respond to those needs. Find their questions and look up the answers. Then, once you have established yourself as a trustworthy member of the forums, you can add your link to your signature.

An example of a good signature would be: "Are you looking for success in your business and true happiness in your life? Then go to {link} to learn more with my newsletter, {title}." It's short, to the point, it raises curiosity, and the people who have developed some level of trust in you will gladly sign up. Just be sure that you continue to provide your list with quality content and freebies from time to time so that they know you're not just looking for a buck. They can smell that a mile away.

Another, and in my opinion the best, list building tactic is article marketing. Articles are a great way to show people that you know what you're talking about. If you use the right services, like Article Marketer and iSnare, you can reach a LOT of people who are looking for your information. Writing articles is not really that hard, either, once you get started. Just start writing and then edit once you're done. This will bring your list building to another level. It does take a little longer, though, to get a good response from articles, but the response is so big that it is well worth the effort and patience.

Don't know what to write about? It's easy. Just go back to the forums, and write about what the members want to know about. The probability is that if they want to know, so do many, many more people, too. List building is about giving people what they want. Don't just try to sell something because you think they might like it. Feed the demand, then give the people more. They will love you for it and respond with their dollars.

These simple list building strategies are the same that all of the professionals swear by. And for good cause. Try these techniques if you don't already, and be patient. Nothing happens overnight, and anything that does will die overnight, too. List building is especially that way, but if you want to find true success, you have to make it happen.