When I got in the Timber business in Oregon same thing the mills just stuck and add in a local paper and waited for timber owners to call a log buyer.. well I put a data base together of every timber land owner form OR> CA border to seattle over 10k of them then called them on the phone for appointments to give a free analysis of their timber patch. when our competition would just drive around knocking on doors. and Rural folks NEVER get called .. so our telemarketing was uber successful.. most folks had never got a solicitation at all  we had a 5 year run of 50 to 80 jobs a year each about 20 to 60k in net profit.. it was big money and a bunch of fun. .by far the most fun I have had in the RE game in 42 years.. building houses and loaning money is OK but not nearly as neat as logging.

I know some that tried to invest with bad debt but lost it all when they hit a rough financial patch in their investments.

I personally used Patch of Land.

I really geeked out on this part, I had every foot of wire, every plumbing fitting, every drywall patch labeled and accounted for.