Advertise that you are looking, and put yourself a website to start building a web presence.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been doing extensive research from listening to podcast, to reading and surfing the web.

I don't think the rentals in this area really fit the 1%-2% rule or the 50% rule, but I see rentals are everywhere in my area based on research on Zillow and County Assessor web site. 

feel free to interact in the forums, meet some great people, and definitely provide more value to the community by sharing your thoughts, experiences, and of course, success stories!

I understand that but I personally enjoy the face to face interaction as it tells a lot about a person and is just a bit more personal.

I also have experience in internet marketing, web site design and some various odds and ends.My goal for this year is 2 to 4 house flips (which we have wanted to do for many years), and eventually (past this year) to acquire some rentals to keep.The inventory here is not like a big city -- but I've been keeping a close eye on things (for way longer than I've had my real estate license) and I see that it is really hard for people to find lower priced homes that are "decent" at the very least.

With this interaction comes learning.

@Stephanie Darnell you could always be proactive and contact top producing RE agents in your market and offer your service's for free.. and only get compensated when they sell and close.. you could offer to fill flyer box's do web work and other marketing type things.

Feel free to interact in the forums!

BP is a great resource, but at some point you gotta stop perusing web sites, stop reading books, and just jump into the water.