Evolution of Deal Sources

[Jason Duet]

I posted this as a comment in a thread in my local forum (Baton Rouge), but things are a bit slow there so I thought I'd try a broader audience.

For those who have been involved in real estate for some time, how have your deal sources evolved as you grew as an investor? As someone who is starting out on the investment side, I've tried to read as much literature as I could find. One of the things I occasionally come across is that the MLS, though difficult, can produce some good deals from time to time.

As a real estate agent, it's hard for me to see how (granted, the BR market is currently very much a seller's market so that probably skews it a bit). The very nature of the MLS is the broad exposure it offers, which makes it seem extremely unlikely that there are good deals to be found unless there's just a ton of inventory out there.

Yet I have seen some who write that when first starting out, all they knew was the MLS and therefore it was where their first deals came from. What I want to know is: if you started out using the MLS for sourcing deals at any point, did you continue to source leads from it once you became proficient at other strategies (driving for dollars, direct mailing, etc)? or did you drop it all together?