Friday, September 28, 2007

How To Find Cheap Airfare.

Air travel is no longer considered a luxury only available for the wealthy and is now almost essential to our way of life. Instead of driving hundreds of miles to visit friends and family, attend a business meeting, or enjoy a vacation hotspot, a flight can whittle your travel time to a couple of hours instead of a couple of days. Also, more and more individuals are seeking to explore all corners of the world where car travel is prohibited. Although air travel is a great deal less expensive today than in days past, everyone is always looking the best deals available. If you are in the market to find cheap airfare, consider your options before you buy the first ticket available.

In days past, the only way to buy an airline ticket was to either visit your local travel agent or purchase the ticket directly from the airline. The introduction of the World Wide Web rocked the airline industry, as well as the job stability of the travel agent, as individuals were able to book their own flights. Today, there are countless websites devoted to finding the cheapest flights possible, including favorites like Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, and Priceline. Additionally, all airlines have websites devoted to their fares and deals, which may beat the fares offered at the alternative sites.

When it comes to finding cheap airfare, consider the options, including time of travel, destination, origination, airport selection, and travel dates. If you have the luxury of a flexible schedule, consider traveling during the off season. Typically, flights around holidays, early spring when schools are on spring break, and the summer are more expensive than the other times. A good rule of thumb is that air travel is cheaper when children are in school. Often, airlines offer sales and special rates that end in late May and begin again at the end of August.

However, not everyone has the luxury of flying in these off seasons, so the next variable is the destination and origination. Depending on your location, you may want to look at several different airports in your area. Since different airlines use different airports as their hubs or regional operating areas, the airport of origination plays a large part in the final fee you pay. The same theory goes with the destination. Choose larger airports instead of smaller ones, since adding a commuter flight to your bill can greatly inflate the price.

Finally, look to the specific dates of travel. For most destinations, the prices for flights on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday are less expensive than those leaving on the other days of the week. Also, ensuring you spend at least one weekend at the destinationknown as a Saturday layovercan bring the price of the ticket down dramatically. Most websites offer flexible searches, which allow you to focus on the price of the ticket instead of the schedule of the flight.

When it comes to purchasing the actual ticket, using an Internet-based company is usually the best way to go. If you are in need of a rental car or hotel room, consider purchasing a package. Unlike traditional tours, packages include only hotels, rental cars, or both along with an airline flight, making it perfect for individuals who still want to travel on their own but save money in the process. Also, when searching for flights or packages, look to the airlines websites in addition to the afore-mentioned websites. In many instances, purchasing a flight directly off an airlines website can be cheaper. Additionally, many airlines run frequent flyer bonuses with online purchases, so you can earn the maximum miles for your flight.

One great way to get the cheapest airfare is to enroll in frequent flyer programs. Even if you do not intend to fly a great deal, these programs include other ways to earn, including popular online purposes, hotel stays, and car rentals. Furthermore, most airlines have associated credit cards that allow you to earn miles with each and every purchase.
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By: Mike Barus -

Mike Barus specializes in cheap air fare and travel

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Travel And Make Money - Profitable Travel Blogging Strategies

Why do we seek to make more money?I'll tell you why, because money buys freedom. Freedom to go where we want.Do what we want; when we want.If you are like me, you love to travel.You've got wanderlust and you got it bad.Simply put: Money finances our wanderlust and traveling makes us happy. Here's one thing many people don't know --you can actually travel and make money at the same time.This article is intended to introduce you to one way to make money traveling by travel blogging.

Travel blogging can be done anywhere in the world where you have a laptop and an Internet connection. And it can allow you to make money simply by sharing your travel experiences.Here are a few key considerations to establishing a profitable travel blog:

*Choose a travel topic with the widest market appeal. A blog is like any other product, to determine if it will be successful before you start you must first determine if there is market demand for the information the blog will provide.Thereare a number of ways to do this.The easiest to is to research the popularity of keywords related to the travel topics you want to cover with your blog.Goggle and Overture have good free keyword research tools.You can find them from any search engine. Make sure that your related keywords are searched at least 10,000 times in any given month.This number is a good minimum threshold.

* Monetize the blog.You won't make any money with your blog unless it is monetized.There are three primary ways to monetize a blog: advertising revenue, affiliate sales and sales of your own products.If you are just starting out, you probably won't have any products of your own so its best to start with ad revenue and affiliate sales. For the beginner, Google's Adsense is a good starting place for getting good contextual based advertising revenue.For affiliate sales there are many travel related affiliate products at Commission Junction and Amazon's Associate program. There are many, many more programs you can use to monetize your blog but I recommend these because of ease of use.

* Build readership.A blog without visitors makes no money. Period.First, your blog should contain good content updated frequently.That's what keeps readers who do find you coming back for more. Next, your blog should have RSS feeders and the ability to capture the email address of visitors who want to optin to your newsletter (that you need to establish) or site updates.There is a decent free blog optin service offered by FeedBlitz.Next, promote your blog by including a reference to it in your email "sig file."Also, readership will naturally increase as you post more.Each time you post most blog software will ping (notify) the search engines of the new entry.The more quality pings you receive the higher your blog will appear in search engine rankings.The higher you get the more traffic you generate.The more traffic you generate the more money you'll make.

These are the very basics you need to establish a profitable travel blog.If traveling and making money appeals to you consider starting a travel blog.
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By: Daniel Hall

Daniel Hall, along with Gina-Henry Cook, is co-creator of the Travel Making Money system. Access their system and get exclusive travel blog training to turn your travel experiences into a profitable travel blog see www.travelmakingmoney.com/

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