Need Opt-ins... LIKE NOW

What's your sales funnel like?

And there is good reason for that ^^^...
With all the "money is in the list" posts i don't blame people for thinking that slapping together a list is a fast track to making money...

Well I would say that if you have general marketing information then you should use Ad swaps, sell solo and buy solo mailings - Safe-Swaps or for other niches you would have better luck with Directory of Ezines and if Directory of Ezine didn't have your specific niche I would try either some sort of ppc or ppv route.
I hope that helps if so please press the thanks button, it will help out my profile. Thanks!

Looks like sig exposure to me!

Umm...

If you have something to sell, with a sales funnel, then you can buy solo ads. If your squeeze page doesn't convert well, that might be costly and take a time.

A good way to fine tune is to use traffic, such as forum traffic to fine tune your squeeze page. Once you have that up at a reasonable leve, say 30%, then start buying solo ads. Now you need to fine tune things, so you tweak your sales page if you have one, or work on pre-selling affiliate offers if not, so that you start to make sales to cover some of the cost of the solo ad.

You're probably a way away from doing that, and getting 500 in a week is possible, if you already know what you're doing.

Well that depends on your funnel. You can buy solo ads. Of course you need to create a nice squeeze page first or it will take you a lifetime to get high conversion rate.

Buying solo ads is by far the simplest and fastest method to get more opt-ins.

I think safelist can contribute to what you need urgently here. The list, right?
Safelist can be free, most of them are, but make sure you use new non-primary email address to get the email.

No offense, but I wouldn't consider 10 to 50 a day "quantity".

If you really want quantity without a large budget, then you have to do this:

1) Find a high converting hungry market niche (IM, Diet, etc)

2) Either create your own info product for it or buy one you can resell, or find a high converting affiliate one that pays 100% instant Commision.

3) Take parts of that info product, some great tips from it to create a short report you can give away for free as an optin incentive.

4) Create a sales page for the product and a squeeze page for the free report. Either do it yourself if you have the skills and tools, or hire someone to write the copy and design them for you. Have the sales page say it's an exculsive time limited offer and discount.

5) Set up the auto responder on your squeeze page to redirect people to the product upsell sales page (with paypal button), after they submit their email.

6) Send the free report download link in an autoresponder email to them after they confirm their subscription (double opt in).

7) Test the conversion rate of the product squeeze page and upsell page, through some ads or forum Signiture traffic like mentioned just to get enough traffic to give conversion percentages. Then tweak them if needed.

8) Once you have good conversions for them (Squeeze 35% min and upgrade page 8% min), then start buying good Solo ads, though always read real reviews first and always start with the smallest order to test their traffic quality.

9) The money you make in PayPal from people optin in and buying the upgrade upsell right away should at least cover your solo ad expense you paid.

10) If that list proved to convert good then reinvest your profits in buying more clicks from them and testing other solo ad lists also.

11) Keep reinvesting your profits into more solo ads.

12) Once you get your list up to at least 500, start looking for free solo ad swaps also to grow it faster. As it grows you'll be able to swap with people who have larger and larger lists.

13) Also set up your autoresponder sequence to promote the upsell again and to promote other related products, after a few promotion free content rich emails in between them that are set up to presell them on the upcoming promotion. (Start with lower ticket products and then higher ticket products).

14) Keep reinvesting as much of your profits as you're able to.

This all takes some time and work and isn't overnight! Though the immediate upsell should give you enough back instantly in PayPal to buy more ads right away and grow it much faster.

They are, and there are reasons for that, and they're good and valid and reliable reasons, and some of them are explained above.

Right now, what you need is a little more learning and a little less action.

This is a mistaken approach. (And not a realistic comparison, either: nobody's suggesting it will take you "months" to build a list of 500).

List-building isn't about quantity and speed.

Like almost everything else that actually matters, in internet marketing, it's about quality and relevance (targeting).

This post may help you: The Absolute Best Method For Getting Subscribers Fast?