Guidelines for cold messaging people

tl;dr: Inform your recipient if you're asking multiple people the same thing

FWIW I also got the same email (I think the person might have been going through a list of practicing coaches and messaging some or all of them) and I considered it rude not to be informed this is a copy-paste message they are reaching out to several people with. This would perhaps be a lesser problem for people who are following the rest of the advice, but in any case I would recommend being transparent when you're reaching out to multiple people who are quite busy, so they can make an informed decision and perhaps coordinate who responds to you. As it is, it feels like they are thoughtlessly maximising the amount of responses they get at the expense of the recipients' time, with an end result where most of the messages have overlapping content and are therefore wasted effort. I don't think they did this on purpose, which is why OP and I considered it a good idea to post this PSA for other people to learn from.

Additionally, I have paying clients with similar issues, so perhaps consider offering to pay me for a session rather than asking for free coaching, or explain why that's not an option.

Great list, thanks.

I think for 7. there is a possible alternative:

Writing something like "In the case that you would be willing to answer my questions I have included them below this mail" and putting them in at the end of the mail (below the closing of the e-mail).

This could have advantages for both sides:

1. The recipient can, if they choose, have a short look at the questions and decide based on that whether they want to answer. They don't run the risk of saying "yes" and then being confronted with a time investment they didn't want to make once they read the questions in a second mail.
2. Maybe the questions are interesting for the recipient (increasing the likelihood of them answering).
3. If the questions are easy to answer and the mail reaches the recipient at a time when he is able and willing to answer them it is not necessary for them to answer the mail and then wait for the questions.

This list of email scripts from 80,000 Hours also seems useful here https://80000hours.org/articles/email-scripts/

As an elaboration on 5:

If a very minimal answer is helpful, emphasize that this is the case. For example, if I'm emailing an expert on some topic I don't know very much about, I will add something like "I would be grateful for any direction on this, even if it's just the names of some relevant authors"

In my experience, people are often pretty good at putting together a low-cost-to-them, but highly-valuable-for-me answer. For example, they'll say something like "This was well-studied by <names> several years ago, but basically the answer is <one or two sentence response that lacks details and might be a bit high-context for me, but is nonetheless helpful>"

If there's a succinct way to convey your background, this can make it easier for the person to write a short response that is useful to you (though this can quickly go against 8, if you're not careful). For example, I once emailed a guy who studies bird aerodynamics and after explaining my question, I added the context that I have a PhD in physics. He gave me a very short, but very helpful answer that was only possible by using some physics jargon.

I wanted to say that I read through the whole sequence and I find the content to be general, watered down and somewhat insulting of the reader's intelligence. Except maybe the last post in the sequence about CRM, that was actually decent. But the way I want to be productive with this comment, is that we should really stop speaking about trivial fundamentals as if we're somehow really preaching something here. I'd see reason in introducing the fundamentals to then theorize something, hence why I liked the CRM post, but I wouldn't call this a networking game manual the same way I wouldn't call a linear algebra class that if they're teaching us about how to sum and multiply 

what do you mean by "know how to interact with you"? what should the one-sentence introduction consist of that conveys this?

For me, I'd add 0: Don't.  A public note or post that something's available for me to opt into is fine (in related forums), but otherwise leave me alone unless I've explicitly asked to be contacted.