Would this even work online?

Trying to find an angle, so let me fill you guys in.

Ex-realtor, turned loan officer who now lends hard money to investors looking to buy/rehab/flip or buy/rehab/rent. Another big client is mortgage brokers, who basically act as affiliate marketers for us but they can add whatever numbers they want on top of ours and keep the change as long as the referral is coming from them.

Just started two weeks ago and right now I'm getting most of my clientele from the muscle work that I'm putting in on linkedin. Connecting with relevant people and reaching out through their instant messaging system. I really want to turn this into something that will scale easily and become sort of hands off because the income potential is amazing.

I was thinking about going the FB ads route but I'm not too caught up on the IM scene right now. Do you guys think that this is a market that I can tackle online? Or would I be better off investing my time into offline efforts? What avenue would you recommend and why?

I'll be looking for leads, and when I get those leads I have them fill out an application which then gets sent over for pre-approval.

Thanks for your responses.