List building is the backbone of any marketers’ arsenal. To effectively grow on-line, you must have a list, and that list must be responsive.

Therefore, there are two aspects to work on.

The first aspect is growing a list, and all things being equal, the larger your list the better. But when the focus is only on building a bigger list, it is easy to forget about responsiveness and allow just anyone to subscribe.

When one builds a list just for the sake of the numbers, responsiveness often goes down. Remember quality over quantity.

The second aspect, of course, is responsiveness. A list must be developed from a source of buyers and then be cultivated.

So it is important that you steer clear of list building via buying lists or simply getting on a bunch of lists and putting their owners on your lists. You don’t read their emails, nor do they read yours. Go for buyers when list building!

So what are the top 5 techniques for building a list?

This is in the order I prefer;

1) Article marketing. This really works. I write a lot of articles, and track my responses, and my list is growing as a direct response of the articles I write and send out. Simply write articles on your product’s topic, send the articles to several of the article directories on-line today, and watch your subscriber count go up.

2) Google Adwords. This really works. People who search on Google are buyers. Yes, it is expensive, but if you are willing to work at it, you can develop a campaign that produces a return on your money.

The thing with Adwords is that you cannot just find 100 keywords and write an ad and bid a random amount. You must study the tracking numbers, rotate different ads for effectiveness, and bid effectively. Know what your cost per subscriber is, and your revenue per subscriber.

3) Ezine advertising. The key with this is testing. Some ezines go out to unresponsive lists, others to highly responsive lists. The only way to find this out is to test. Put tracking links on every piece of advertising you do. Tracking your lists is very important!

4) Search engine results. This takes a lot more time, but when you build links through the article marketing, you will generally move up in search engine rankings.