Is there a standard for distributing permission for account creation?

I am creating a web app that will require the user to have an account to access, but I am not allowing people to create accounts freely. I want to give specific people permission to a pre-existing account. Is there a common/standard way of doing this that is user friendly and secure? For example, taking the person's email and emailing them a link to a page that they can create a user name and password for their account on?

It's a video upload service and I have the contact information of people that need to be given log in capabilities already.