How effective is door knocking as a buyer or wholesaler?

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Hello,

I'm contemplating getting back into real estate wholesaling. A little background and context, I was previously land wholesaling and seeing some "success" with it (I had a few deals under contract, but they all fell through) before I chose to stop and pursue a software idea. I'm still working on that software idea, but if it doesn't work out, I was thinking of getting back into wholesaling using the door knocking strategy.

I don't want to go back to land wholesaling even though I was seeing some "success" because of the same reason I want to try door knocking (to set myself apart from everyone else sending letters and postcards). I was also dealing out of state because the market I'm in isn't great for small home builders (who were my end-buyers in better real estate markets for home building).

Also, my strategy is to be very targeted using a specific leads list of distressed homes I found before I stopped wholesaling, look up the the primary residence of the distressed home's owner, and knock on the door of their primary residence basically asking if they would be interested in selling the distressed home. When I was looking through the list before, I was finding a ton of properties in good areas that have been verified to be vacant for years and I didn't even get through 10% of the list. I think little to no one is looking at this lead source (that was free!) in my area, so I think there's still a big opportunity to come back to.

Has anyone else tried it and had success with it before?