It's the safest way to start and it's a guaranteed profit when you get the right deal!

So back to being a real estate investor: the only way to be one is to buy a property and create value out of it, whether through finding a below market value house and selling for a profit, or renting and creating cash flow.  

As you start closing deals, you will need to reinvest your profits into mailing lists and other scalable activities to grow your business.

The price you pay for being part of the Disney World spoon-feed of guests is that the barrier to entry for profitable STRs (ones that leverage close to or max LTV) is very, very high.  

If you make it to Memphis, we invest pretty heavily in the youth club game down here and our non-profit, Cancer Kickers Soccer Club, is the first non-profit to be on the jersey of a professional soccer team, 901 FC of the USL. 

@Alex Hymanson  you should read the book...Storing Up Profits. 

You can negotiate a flat fee, or percentage of their profit of any deal. 

Sometimes making a smaller profit and providing value is far better than holding out for a bigger payday on a bad deal, I like that.

If you buy it too low, in some jurisdictions they will call it "equity skimming" which is illegal.It can be very profitable, I've done many, but you really need to know what you are doing. 

As I studied earlier, the first thing you should do is marketing, then get a call and do a property analysis to understand if it's profitable for you, then meet with the seller and sign all the necessary papers, then if there is a debt in the bank we do a reinstatement quote, then do a title search to check if there are any hidden debts, if everything is fine we look for an investor or flipper and sign an assignment of contract with him and wait for closing to get our money.