How to get into the Land Business?

I would like to get into the business of Land. I would love some opinions on the smartest/profitable way to make money doing this. For example, auction land, and reselling, buying sims and renting them out in plots, gathering up lots of sims? I'm not really sure where to begin. Naturally I'm interested in whats most profitable. I see where many are just buying up any land they can get their hands on. I was thinking, maybe buy 1/2 region, putting houses on it, and start renting them out. But I'm not sure this will make the amount I seek. Not sure though. Thanks for your input in advance.

Step 1: Buy Lindens
Step 2: Buy Lindens
Step 3: Buy Lindens
Step 3a: Buy Lindens
Step 4: Buy land
Step 5: Sell land, ideally for more than you bought it for

There is a shortcut: You can incorperate Steps One through Three-A into one monster buy of Lindens. Mostly, you just need Lindens. Let me know if you need some houses built, though!

ETA: Alrightalright, that wasn't terriby helpful. It just seems like the land trade is very difficult to break into on any large scale, and even on the small scale, requires lots of initial capital. Somebody posted a scheme about pre-selling a sim. The idea is you figure out your 'theme', then map out the plots and figure out a price so that if you pre-sell the majority of the plots you'll have enough to go ahead and buy the sim with a tidy profit left over. It sounds alright in theory, but my understanding of it is there's a lot of trust involved. First, I think you have to get the money in advance to have the funds to buy the sim, which is a leap of faith on the part of your tenants. If you don't, you have to trust that they'll all lease what they say they'll lease and not leave you holding the bag. I'm having trouble locating the thread ('sim presell' turns up nothing), but I'll keep looking.

1. Use scripts and client hack to swoop on owner mistakes.
2. Sell the land to another alt.
3. Put it back on the market.

LL is starting to implement some protective measures but people still make mistakes.

Tips for protecting your land
1. Don't place it for sale and then do a divide or join.
2. Don't use land sales for advertising. There is a bug.
3. Don't deed it to a group unless you really trust them.

The land market is just like RL. I helped a friend pick and sell some first land.
Instead of the normal search for flat land, we found a very steep piece of land that overlooked a protected valley. We then put a small cabin and a deck on it so that the deck had a lovely view of the valley.
It sold quickly

Buy Low,
Sell High,
Repeat as necesary.

Angel.

I'm getting the feeling my question was silly on some level...

No, Not silly, but the Key to REALLY Making Money in Realestate Investment in SL is the same as it is in RL, you Need Money to get started, Most times, BIG Money. After that, it's pretty simple.
Anshe Chung does as well as she does because A: she Invests, and reInvests her profits, and B: she works Damn hard at the Above.

Angel.

Not exactally silly. But being a land trader will not help you make friends. There have been a lot of bad practices when it comes to land trading. They will turn it around and call is jealousy, but we are just tired of the signs, land swoopers, and really stupid prices of virtual land.

That's not Senatus Populusque Romanus but small profits; quick returns. You don't need lots of Lindens to start with: buy your first land from Gov Linden for 512 and then put it on the market for a reasonable amount. Then with the profit, buy another plot. I have a friend who is doing just that - she isn't making a mint but she makes a small profit every time, and she has the patience to wait until the next buyer comes along - which isn't usually very long as she doesn't ask ridiculous prices. She doesn't want to pay anything extra to LL at the moment, so she's keeping it to one 512 plot at a time for now. Of course eventually outlay will exceed profit if she doesn't tier up, I suppose. At the moment she's just doing it for fun, LOL

I don't know why I'm giving land advice really - I'm the idiot who sold almost 4000m for 10,000. I needed to tier down fast, but on reflection, I could probably have asked and got twice that. Anshe has nothing to fear from me, LOL.

With the new group tools, you can avoid this problem. Just make sure that only the group owner has the ability to put group land up for sale.

Or you can just create a group where all the members are you and your alts

Thank you for your replies. And I have been reading about the land swooping issue. Thats not something I live with myself after doing. I go out of my way to help those in need, so I could never take advantage of that situation. I suppose I could start renting land out and do the auction thing on the side for starters. For me it's hard to know how much land should go for... I should research this.

Actually, I'd like to revise my previous formula. Omit step 3-A so you have some USD left to pay for all that tier you're going to accumulate.