New investor marketing

[Dustin Erlewine]

After many years sitting there sidelines from analysis paralysis the last December I finally decided to start buying. I set a goal to get 5 BRRRs this year and next year double it. I just went under contract with my first deal I found on the MLS. However, that deal is a rare breed. So I started my deal searching by doing driving for dollars, list source, and building a direct mailing list. I feel I'm doing this wrong, I spent a considerable amount of time searching, researching, and building my personalized letters. I also spent considerably more cash than I thought to compile my data and get it shipped. My method I used is the following.

1. Drive for dollars, mark houses with my OnX maps. Sometimes I mark  neighborhoods without driving them buy using trulia to find my target price range properties.  
2. Transfer the data from OnX maps (landowner name and tax address) into Excel. 
3. Use Whitepages to confirm the address, and get a phone number. Use list source for other data.  
4. Print a letter and stick it in a envelope and ship it to the address. I’m considering post cards and yellow letters. I’m also using list source for extra data, but I’m not finding it extremely useful on some of their features. 
5. I started a website for some of those leads to check out.  
6. Impatiently wait for leads, and consider how much time, effort, and cash I’ve put into just sending about 300 letters.  I do have numbers of about 250 people to cold call.  

I think it cost me about 30-40 hours of work and about $700 bucks. Including webpage, whitepages, research, list source, driving, paper, envelopes, and stamps. 

I think I’m doing it wrong.  The positive is I've got a solid list built. However, the law of averages tell me that 300-600 letters a month isn’t going to feed me 8-12 deals a year.  I feel I’m being proactive to the masses, when I want to be passively proactive to the hot lead.  Do I need to focus my time and energy on online sources?