Best practices for reaching your first 1000 subscribers

Work on conversions.

Keep tweaking and testing each landing page in your funnel to maximize opt-ins and sales. Ideally you would like the funnel to be self supporting.

i.e. for every $100 you spend on solo-ads/traffic = $100 return so you are covering your costs.

You get a much higher ROI investing in increased conversions than simply getting more traffic.

Also make sure you have a good autoresponder series in place.

If you are working hard and spending money tweaking and getting opt-ins from your funnel you are undermining your own work if you are not immediately engaging and leveraging your relationship with an autoresponder series.

Use quality traffic. If you slam crappy traffic at your funnel you will get bad clicks, poor opt-ins and non-responsive subscribers.

Make sure you are using quality traffic to maximize the value of opt-ins.

Solo-ads are good for MMO niche. Make sure you use a reputable seller with good feedback.

For PPC/Paid Traffic use quality sources like facebook, Bing and adwords. Not 7search or fiverr.

YouTube is good for free traffic because you have an opportunity to engage, start the relationship process and provide strong calls to action.

Depending on your niche and skill at developing content, finding partners in your niche for shared ventures or guest posts can bring quality traffic.

When looking at solo-ad type traffic, look at other ways you can expose your funnel.

Buying a spot on another marketer's funnel Thank You page or OTO can be even more effective than a solo-ad to his list.

When making an offer to another marketer's list it can be good to make a custom landing page just for them. You don't need to do this for every solo-ad but if you are expecting high traffic or you are buying from a "name" marketer then a landing page that greets them more personally can improve conversions and their trust in you.

Use something like "Exclusive to Guru Dave subscribers..." in your copy.

get creative with social media and your lead magnets and how you can tie the two together

Paid acquisition: I'd try Facebook ad (take advantage of the tight targeting) -> Landing Page with Optin Bait

Content marketing / blogging is a great way to grow your list, especially when offering post-specific optin-baits / content upgrades. (= Offering a unique, targeted optin bait for each post).

Another thing worth trying would be to build a WSO and give affiliates 100% payouts. You won't make money, but get a highly targeted list of buyers.