My own personal twelve step program for better ratio building. Here are my tips for what they are worth.

1. First make sure that your client is connectable. If you are not connectable you will not be able to upload to half to three fourths of a trackers members. Those folks that are not connectable will be unable to leech from you if you are not connectable as well.
2. Never ever, ever, never, ever, download a large pack, unless you have the buffer to take the hit. If you do it will only turn into an unfillable ratio hole. Most of those leechers you see on packs are actually partially seeding and actively downloading nothing. Just don't do it, avoid the pack.

3. Always read the Rules and FAQ's they are there for a reason. Often times they will provide excellent tips and tricks for starting to build a good ratio on that particular tracker.

4. Cross seed everything. This is the quickest and most useful way to build ratio in my opinion, the power of cross seeding should not be underestimated.

5. Take the first few days to actually build a ratio instead of starting to download all of those files you want. this is the best way to make sure that you do not get into trouble over ratio issues.

6. Never complain in the shoutbox or forums about how hard it is to seed or how hard it is to build a ratio. Sometimes members may help you out, but, more often than not you will annoy people and this is not a good way to build rep in any community. Every member of that tracker is going through the same thing, you complaining about it will not make you popular it will make people want to ban you.

7. Seed, seed, seed, and then seed some more. If you have a file that has no activity seed it anyway, eventually it will be downloaded and it will hit a ratio of 1. I have had files that sat for months with nothing and then all of the sudden my ratio on them built up to a ratio of 10 or 20 litterally over night. Seed till you bleed.

8. Consider a seedbox. They decouple your IP from any illegal activity and they are like the Terminator, they never get tired, they never get shut off, and they never stop.

9. Leave you PC on, often times shutting your PC off if you are seeding will hurt far more than it helps. You need to be part of the swarm or in the peer list in order to build a ratio.

10. RSS and IRSSI are your friends, learn how to use them. The best way to build ratio is to hop on a file as soon as possible so that you can get the maximum amount of ratio from it. RSS makes this possible by auto downloading a file as soon as it is posted to the tracker.

11. Take advantage of Freeleech Download files you don't need or want but other people are snatching they cost you nothing to pull down and do nothing but add to your ratio when they are snatched from you. Freeleech is your friend. Freeleech can often do wonders for digging one out of a ratio pit.

12. Grab files solely to build ratio. Don't have an Xbox grab an Xbox rip anyway. PS3 and Xbox rips are popular files and are great for building ratio. Once the swarm dies delete the files, Porn is the same. Porn is ALWAYS a popular download on trackers and it is one of the quickest ways to build a respectable ratio.