Giving for a tax write off is giving to receive and that's not offering first fruits. 

In marketing one says,  ":Don;t put all your eggs in one basket"... use several marketing venues right?

With a "larger" (its all relative) your eggs aren't in one basket and you have segmented your liability without driving yourself crazy with one bank account and debit/credit cards for each property you own and the associated bookkeeping.Using conforming residential loans (which a legal entity is not eligible) can be a powerful tool. 

Rather then putting all of your eggs in one basket, you may consider splitting up your funds and still be able to buy larger properties with a partnership. 

Later on, as you have acquired more, I would lean back a bit and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

My advice is to always look at the fruit. 

As for real estate meetups, these are great networking tools and as such highly valuable, but typically seem to bear little fruit for capital raising.  

However about 15 months of that was spent trying to get it done on my own and that was not fruitful.

Numerous bugs had laid eggs in the appliance (flies and fruit flies) and the old chicken stunk badly. 

You are not going to get rich off appreciation from them (Unless they are in say a downtown area of a major city), but they provide nice solid cash flow with less management compared to other real estate assets.I also dont point all my eggs in one basket.