He sells them for tens of thousands a pop and generates revenue of over $1M a year and has no overhead except his electric bill in his basement for the lighting, a part time employee and of course the food.

Focus on something that will generate additional revenue, right now you will be chasing it

If you're looking for consistent rental revenue, search for places with high occupancy rates and rentals that meet your expenses, such in the Midwest with cities like Cleveland and Indianapolis.

Recently did a clean-out of several disruptive, law and lease-violating tenants, but have been coming up empty in finding solid replacements, and could really use some revenue coming in again. 

Unless you stay often during peak season, then you might not make as much revenue on the STR.

You'll learn about real estate in the process and its good to have more than one revenue stream especially when starting out.  

Second of all, I always doubt blanket statements about profit or revenue.

Since then we stayed focused on new construction of single family homes, eventually segueing into small multi unit buildings (3 & 4 units), while doing some interior condo renovations here and there to keep generating revenue until the new builds came to fruition.Overall, my hot take is: New Construction for the win.

Note this is the biggest issue, but other things to consider is no revenue until ADU is built and rented.  

If you are open you could put those up on Airbnb and you will probably get the best revenue that way.