Help / suggestions for opt-in building email lists?

Hey everyone.

I have searched this forum and found some threads that are 4-5 years old regarding something that I have been thinking about with email marketing.

I am new to all of this as I am sure you will be able to tell by my questions and have tried my best to do a search to find my answers but cannot, so I apologize in advance if this has been discussed already. Maybe I don't know the right terminology to search under?

I am trying to learn about building an email list and have started writing my free report that I will give away in exchange for an email address (basic pdf format) and it seems from reading old threads on this forum that it is inevitable that my free report, provided that it is high in value, will get leaked, copied, and shared on the internet without others actually opting in with an email address.

Does this still hold true in 2015? Are there ways around this? Should I be concerned about this at all?

I have read from some people on old threads here that because it is destined that my free report will get shared with others without an exchange of an email address, that it is a good idea to sprinkle your affiliate links in the report that you give away for free. That sounds like a good idea and all, but here is where I am having a problem with this....

I plan on actually spending a lot of time, thought, and care with my free giveaway and truly believe that I have something different to offer in my report that none of my competitors discuss or that I even see discussed on the internet. The niche that I am about to enter is something that I actually genuinely care a great deal about so I don't want my free report to seem like a sales pitch with a bunch of affiliate links on it.

I was actually thinking about NOT putting any affiliate links on my report at all. Is this a good idea? bad idea?

I have very mixed feelings now about the direction I am heading towards and don't know if what I am doing is the right way of going about things?

I hate to spend all this time and effort in my report expecting to build an email list out of it, but only potentially get a few subscribers because a bunch of people who got my report never even came to my website in the first place.

At the same time, as I have said above, I do care about this niche and the people that I will hopefully attract, so the point that the content is being spread around doesn't really bother me too much because ultimately I would like anyone who is interested in my niche to read the report.

Having said that, it does defeat the whole purpose of trying to build a list though, right? Or wrong? I dunno?

What I was thinking about doing was providing something at the end of the report that will pull my visitors into wanting to subscribe. So if someone got one of my reports from a forum or something similar that was not via my opt-in, by the time they read the end of the report, they will want to go to my site and subscribe.

For example, if my niche was about learning how to read and write English (which it is not) and my free report was a guide on learning the alphabet, then at the end of the report I would put something on there that suggests that if you are a subscriber, you will get emails with tips on how to read and write English now that you know your ABC's (alphabet).

Is this my only option here? Anyone have some suggestions? Experience you can share with me? Or anything to add that will set me in the right direction in creating this report?

Thanks so much in advance.