How many times have you heard the phrase “The Money Is The List”?

Far too many times i believe.

Almost every internet marketing guru will tell you that building your mailing list is one of the most important aspects of building your online business.

Nothing can be further away from the truth.

But the only problem is that most internet marketing programs and e-books only stress the importance of list building but seldom dwell into the intimate details on how to go about actually doing it.

It’s like telling you where the gold mine is and forgetting to give you the shovel to dig for it.

List building is an integral part of any online business, but sometimes it can be a tedious process without the right tools.

Luckily, you can easily streamline and simplify the list building aspect of your online business through the use of an email auto responder.

Here are some simple tips that i follow that have helped me tremendously in my list building efforts.

(1) Get A Reliable Auto Responder.

Free auto reponders are a complete waste of time in my book.

And i learned that out the hard way, try using one and you will come to the same conclusion.

You are better off getting a 3rd party auto responder service like Getresponse or a self hosted auto responder program like Mailloop .

In terms of reliability and ease of use, i give thumbs up for both products.

But when it comes to pricing and technical support, there are some subtle differences but i will not go into that now.

Just keep an eye out for my next few posts where i will explain these differences in greater detail.

For now, if you are an absolute newbie, it’s better to stick first with a 3rd party auto responder service where the cutomer support is a more readily available.

(2) Setting Up Your Capture Form ( Opt-In Box ).

The main aim of the Capture Form or Opt-In Box is to acquire a visitor’s personal details so that we can rely important information through the use of email communications.

Usually this is achieved through the use of an “Ethical Bribe” a.k.a Freebies in the form of niche reports, e-books etc. in exchange for their personal information.

Capture forms can be easily customized for color and size so as to match your existing website design.

Collectible data ranges from the normal First Name, Last Name & Email Address to more specific details like Address, Telephone Numbers etc.

All good auto responder programs will provide 2 different options when it comes to setting up your capture form, namely the Static & Dynamic Capture Forms.

(a) Static Capture Form:

These are the small “Box-like” items with that most webmasters usually place on the top left or right side of their landing pages or websites.

When using a Static Capture Form, always ensure that the Capture Form Design is attractive or the Free Giveaway is enticing enough otherwise most visitors will tend to ignore or miss it completely.

(b) Dynamic Capture Form

These are the animated items that seem to appear out of nowhere and land right in the middle of your screen.

Some “Floats” slowly in from the sides, while other simply “Bounces” in and hits you right in the face.

Pretty annoying sometimes but it seems to get the job done in terms of getting your full attention.

I personally prefer the static one, but it all depends on the target audience you are focusing on.

Stay tuned for the concluding installation of my list building tips using an auto responder in my next post.