I highly recommend starting with the beginner's guide and the podcasts but that's what got me into the real estate game, so I am a bit biased.

In Dayton, generally sales under 70K are biased towards landlords, and sales over 70K start trending towards homeowners.

Ashley, as a Realtor, I'm of course biased towards putting it on the MLS for speed of getting it rented and bringing in a bigger pool of qualified applicants.    

More important than my bias is the viability to make money on a place.  

Skip Gilliam As a note investor - I will be bias and tell you that you should invest in notes.

My experience says that they aren't, unfortunately.We're pretty good at wholesaling houses here, in my very biased opinion.  

I would like your bias opinion.

This makes it very secure [more than wall street] for them.All of my lenders enjoy strong double digit annual returns and only spend a few hours a year [making wire transfers] to realize this profit.Yes, I am biased when it comes to RE or Wall Street - but ponder this and you'll see why:  We all know bankers are some of the most penny pinching individuals on the planet, right?  

If it was me personally, I would go the same route as @Walker Seid however I am very anti-401k's so my opinion may be biased!

While I know I have much to learn about being a landlord, I seem to get a lot of unsolicited and obvious advice from the male gender on how I should run my business, especially from people not in real estate.