That is exactly what I was thinking also, and why I asked the question about spamming. As for as I see it you can only build up a good user base if;
a) you have been around for a long time
b) Have a very good rank on the search engines.
OK, since there are questions, I’ll answer. There is a way to build a maillist even if your site doesn’t have many visitors. In Internet Marketing it has been done on daily bases and in fact that is how I’m building my list, about 95% of my subscribers became such through what is known as JV Giveaway. That is exactly what I’m offering right now, only targeting very specific niche – gambling. Here are bases how it works, applied to my JV Giveaway:
1. 300 JV Partners join event, each partner contributes a free gift that will be visible in member’s section.
2. Once event begins each JV partner markets it using whatever means he has, email, website, forums, etc.
3. Members invited by JV partners register on site and get access to all JV partners gifts list. But they are not mailed by anyone, including myself. If they like a gift and would like to have it for free they follow a link where specific JV partner, offering gift, has a subscription form. Once they subscribed – they get their gift.
Subscribers are not shared by anyone, in order to get him or her on your list – you have to offer a gift they will want to receive in exchange for subscription. So as you can see that is an answer for “catch 22” and there is a way to get double optin subscribers, even if you don’t have traffic to your site.
Quality of Your gift determines how many subscribers you will get, quality of Your mailings determines how many of them you will be able to retain. Simple.
Sorry for the long post, just wanted to make things clear. Please use my other post for any specific questions on my offer.