If you are an ezine publisher/email marketer, or you are considering becoming one in the near future, then the importance of having your own email list cannot be stressed enough: the money is in the list.

You can have the best widget on the planet, or the best service, but if there’s no one to offer it to, you do not have a business. Always remember, you are in the business of selling your products or services, so without sales, there will be no profit.

Size does matter here, but it is not crucial. However, the bigger your email list, the more likely you are to monetize it, so let’s see how we can build your list.

There are hundreds of ways you can attract prospects to join your email list. Some will work better than others, depending on your specific target market. For example, public speaking will do wonders for an IT professional, or a motivational speaker. However, if you sell powerboats, there will be less opportunity for you to attract new customers this way.

Here is the first of five tips on growing your list that should work for most businesses. The first three are purely on line strategies, while the last two are traditional, off line methods of generating leads.

1. Sign Up Forms

Weather your home page is a “squeeze page” or you have a regular, branding-type multiple-page web site (or blog), you must have a sign up form of some sort on every single page of your web site. Don’t think about your web site just in terms of your home page, because, if you have articles, about pages, resources, etc., any page can be an entry point for your visitors.This is because search engines will index all of your pages, and people searching the Net using keywords you used can land on any of those pages.

Lets say your web site consists of your home page and 9 other pages. Unless you have a sign up form on every page, you may be missing an opportunity to sign up 90% or even more visitors who may never see you home page. For this purpose, you can use regular HTML forms, hover pops, pop-ups or pop-unders.