Getting my first true investment deal to be profitable

[Nathaniel Hovsepian]

I will say that I have been an investor for a couple of years now. My first two houses were actually accidental investments. One was supposed to be a home for my wife and I to live in and ended up a rental (long story) and the other was a home that we moved into and did a long term fix and flip while we lived in it. I have dabbled in direct mail marketing, cold calling, cold texting, and even door hangers over the past couple years but only within the last 3 months have begun to take my career seriously. I am proud to say that.......

I have finally turned the corner as a real estate investor and gotten a house under contract! 

I did a month's worth of PPC advertising and had sellers calling me asking to buy their houses. I actually went and saw about 10 houses and made offers on 4 of them. 2 were so bad I couldn't imagine anyone doing anything but tearing them down and building a new house (not what I am interested in) and the other 4 were wayyy too nice for me to buy. I actually ended up with 2 under contract, but after doing due diligence realized that one was going to be too expensive to fix up and the seller wouldn't budge on price (I am still calling him back and trying to get him to lower)

I signed on the house almost a month ago and have been running around trying to get quotes for everything and getting the house cleaned up and ready to be worked on. I will admit it, I am taking it a bit slow as this is way larger of a project than I have taken on in the past. I bought the house for $26k, and estimate that it needs $60k worth of repairs with an ARV of approx. $110k. I know that this deal seems a little thin considering that it needs to be taken down to the studs, but I am treating this as a lesson as well as hopefully turning a profit.

I am wondering what sort of advice, tips, tricks, or even don't do's you might have for me?