Fast, easy and free way to get an opt-in mailing list (well sort of)

As you can see I am very new to WF. I have however done some reading and put on my thinking hat ... so here goes a tip I thought of and applied sucessfully for many niches:

1. Get an account on LinkedIn if you haven't already
2. Think of a niche for a group ... (e.g. SEO Masters)
3. Create two super cool icons for your group (100x50 and 60x30). It is important that your icons are eye-catching and something that users will want to be associated with. I cannot stress this point enough - if you can't design for nuts, hire a fucking design monkey to do this.
4. Create the group
5. Do a search for users in the industry of your chosen niche
6. Build your network by adding users with 500+ connections, these are the users who are more open to accept invitations from strangers. Note: When adding users on LinkedIn, you must provide an answer to "How do you know this person". Select "Groups and Association" and select your newly created group (SEO Masters). This person will receive your request to connect on LinkedIn, with a line which says "XXX has indicated that you are part of the SEO Masters group". This obviously helps in two ways (i) You need to have some kind of connection with the other guy before you can add him to your network (ii) This automatically advertises your group to this guy.
7. In your personal note to this individual, write a very short sentence on what you do and introduce your group's link to join (e.g. "Hi John, I manage the SEO Masters group on LinkedIn and think your experience will be helpful to the group. Please accept my invitation to add you to my LinkedIn network and click on this URL to join the group.")
8. *Repeat Steps 5 to 7* until you get sick of it then continue to Step 9 below
9. Ask a Question on LinkedIn - structure your question such that it allows you to end with introducing the URL to join your group (e.g. "Are you in the SEO industry? If you are interested in knowing how this industry is evolving and would like to contribute to a group that is growing daily, click on this URL to apply for membership.") This is the part where people opt-in to join your group.

Now... why the fuck did I ask you to go through all those steps above you might ask? Why don't you just join a pre-created group on LinkedIn? Well, the key difference is when you are part of a group on LinkedIn, you have a link which says "View Members". This however, does not show you the email addresses of these members. When you are the creator of the group, you have an additional link which says "Manage". On this page, the active email addresses of all members of your group are transparent to you. You can even choose to Export the details of these members to a CSV file, complements of LinkedIn.

If done correctly, especially the design of the group icons, you will slowly get requests to join your group as users start to notice the icons in the profile of your group members. The more intelligently you go through steps 5 to 7, the more viral your group will grow. Simple?

Give me a +rep if you liked this tip.