3 Ways to Fly for Peanuts

Issue #2394

• WEALTHY: 3 ways to fly for less (Lori Allen)
• HEALTHY: 5 sources of a powerful anti-aging supplement (Dr. Ray Sahelian)
• WISE: Thomas Fuller on travel

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• The first step toward getting a book published (Michael Masterson)
• Avoid unnecessary repetition in your writing (Don Hauptman)
• It’s Fun to Know… about whale milk
• Add "interpolate" to your vocabulary

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"The fool wanders, a wise man travels."

-Thomas Fuller

How to Fly for Peanuts 

By Lori Allen, Director of AWAI’s Travel Division

I didn’t think the mouse in the pink hat could catch me… but I often wondered what he would have done if he had…

Soon after graduating from college, my roommate and I enjoyed several spontaneous weekend trips to random cities across the U.S. via Air Tran’s X-Fare program. Flights were cheap if you were under 23 and willing to fly standby. So cheap, in fact, that one weekend we decided to fly to New Orleans and back just for dinner.

Long story short, we landed late due to weather. Missed dinner. Had a crazy time in New Orleans that started with a man in a mouse costume with a pink furry hat chasing us down Bourbon Street. And we didn’t make it back home until the next day.

Back then, that was my idea of a last-minute cheap weekend trip. And it was fun.

Today, things are different.

You can’t get X-fares anymore. And even if you could, I’m willing to bet most people wouldn’t qualify for them because of the age limit.

But you can still get cheap flights. And you can still enjoy last-minute, spontaneous getaways, and find incredible deals on your flights while you’re at it.

These days, I use Kayak.com’s new Weekend Search option. And Farecast.com’s Graph Fares.

Flying for Peanuts Secret #1: Kayak.com

If I know where I want to go, but I don’t care which weekend, I use Kayak.com.

At the top of their search page, there’s a button titled: "weekend."

With that button selected, you can choose upcoming weekends or search weekends within specific months. (Once you put in your preferences, look at the top left corner on the Kayak website for a list of the cheapest weekends and hit "Search.")

As I write this, for instance, a flight from Washington, DC to Las Vegas is cheapest the weekend of July 11. It’s $128 cheaper than it would be this weekend and $64 cheaper than it would be the weekend after the 11th.

Flying for Peanuts Secret #2: Farecast.com

If I know where I want to go but I don’t care what day I leave, I use Farecast Graph Fares.

There’s a box on their homepage at the bottom right corner titled "Travel Tools." Click on "Compare Airfares." Then click on the tab that says "Graph – when to travel." Then simply put in your closest airport and the airport you wish to travel to and Farecast will show you a chart of the cheapest days to fly over the next 30 days.

For instance, when I put in DC to Vegas on this website, I can see that my flight would actually be $50 cheaper if I can leave on July 4.

Of course, I don’t want to leave on July 4, because it’s a holiday. Which is why I didn’t book this flight. But it’s cool to see that it’s an option. And when my schedule is a bit more flexible, I use Farecast’s graph to help me choose the best departure day.

You can’t search for first-class fares on Farecast, but you can on Kayak. (I don’t worry about that, though, since I can usually get free frequent-flyer upgrades on Delta.)

These first two Flying for Peanuts secrets work best for quick or last-minute trips. But you can still get good deals on major vacations.

Flying for Peanuts Secret #3: Make your flight cheaper with a round-the-world (RTW) ticket.

A round- the-world ticket is one of the best ways to get a great travel deal.

RTW tickets seem to defy logic. How could it be that adding destinations to your itinerary makes it cheaper?

Amazing as it is, you can get unbelievable deals on flights to Australia, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and more on a round-the-world ticket.

How It Works: RTW booking agencies, like Airtreks.com, work with almost every airline in the world to combine the cheapest flight segments they find into attractive, inexpensive itineraries. And they buy so many tickets, they can negotiate low-low fares.

Say you want to go to Australia…

With an RTW ticket, you could fly to the Cook Islands, Auckland, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia from $1,499 plus tax.

The cheapest round-trip ticket I found from Los Angeles to Sydney on Expedia.com is $1,639. So not only is the RTW ticket cheaper, you also get to fly to New Zealand and the Cook Islands for free.

RTW tickets open up many doors to travel that is otherwise out-of-this-world expensive. For example, if you want to go from New York to Bangkok, you could pay around $1,780 for a round-trip ticket (from Expedia).

But if you take an RTW ticket, you could do New York – Singapore – Bangkok – Rome – London – New York starting at $1,749 plus tax. Again, it’s like getting an extra continent into your itinerary for free.

If continent-hopping isn’t your thing, sometimes you can leave stops off of your itinerary altogether. Check with your booking agent to find out for sure.

Before you plan an RTW trip, keep a few things in mind: Waiting until the last minute to book RTW tickets won’t get you the best deal. Since the ticket agency has to figure out the cheapest tickets for your route, you’d do best to book as far ahead as you can.

Also, pay attention to high-season and low-season at your travel destination. Some RTW tickets charge a supplement for high-season.

RTW fares aren’t hard to book. But I suggest you do your research before you dish out your credit card number. I could have saved $2,000 on my last RTW ticket if I’d known then what I know now.

[Ed. Note: The truth is, you don't need thousands of dollars to travel the world this summer and take vacations your neighbors will drool over. Join AWAI's Get Paid to Travel teleconference, and they'll show you real-world strategies you can put to use now to access this jet-set lifestyle. You could be traveling the world and getting paid to do it... and they'll show you how to get started - for less than $20.]

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It’s Not Too Late to Achieve All Your Goals in 2008

If your New Year’s resolutions have fallen by the wayside, don’t worry.

You’re not the only one who resolutely vowed to achieve certain things in 2008… but got too caught up in work and family and personal issues to make any real progress.

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- Charlie Byrne
Associate Publisher, Early to Rise

Dear ETR: "How do I take the next step to publishing my book?"

"Michael, I realize you’re busy, but I was wondering if you could offer me some advice. I have been reading ETR for several years now, and have always found the advice and guidance in each issue to be sound, valuable, and practical.

"Using information provided in ETR, I have taken action and written a number of children’s books with a specific theme that I intend to develop into a series. I feel that I’m ready to publish the first book right now.

"Anyway, I’m wondering if I should go with self-publishing or attempt to go with commercial publishing. With self-publishing, I would retain all publishing and distribution control over the rights of my books. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t receive the exposure with self-publishing that I would with commercial publishing, and therefore I feel my business would take off very slowly. But then, if I were to try to commercially publish, I’ve come to the realization that it’s much more difficult to do.

"My gut feeling is to self-publish and operate my venture as an online business using ETR guidelines to market my books. Maybe I could create some sort of Internet viral marketing strategy. I would be looking at an investment of about $2,500 (approximately $1,500 to publish and another $1,000 to set up my Web page for e-commerce). Then it would be a matter of publicizing the books and driving traffic to my site, to Amazon, or to Barnes & Noble.

"I’ve already purchased a specific URL with the .net, .org, and .biz domain extensions. Unfortunately, the .com domain for this particular URL wasn’t available. So now I’m kind of stuck. Do you have any ideas or insight that could help get me moving forward again?"

C. Petro
Manchester, NH

Dear C.P.,

You have good instincts. So far, you’ve done just what I would have done. Before you spend money printing those books, however, develop an audience you can sell them to.

Who buys books meant for children of the age group you are writing for? No doubt their parents. How can you get their parents to buy your books from you?

I’ve got plenty of ideas, but I won’t tell you about them until you have completed one of ETR’s recommended programs in direct marketing and Internet marketing – two areas of skill you will need in order to understand and implement the great ideas I’m right now thinking about. You could try ETR’s Direct Marketing Masters program or the Magic Button program, both of which are packed full of proven strategies for making money with almost any type of product.

I’ll give you a hint. My best idea for you follows the model ETR used to grow from zero to $26 million in 8 years… but it’s even better.

So get one of those programs, learn the material, and then write back to me.

- Michael Masterson

[Ed. Note: Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]

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An Antioxidant That Beats Breast Cancer

By Dr. Ray Sahelian, MD  

Yesterday, I told you that animal studies have shown that resveratrol can help prevent the development of prostate cancer in men. Women, too, have a specific reason to pay attention to this powerful antioxidant: It can help protect against breast cancer.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology found that female mice given resveratrol had a significantly reduced risk of developing breast cancer.

This anti-aging substance has a host of additional health benefits – and we look forward to more research over the next few years to give us a fuller understanding of them.

Meanwhile, blueberries, red grapes, cranberries, bilberries, and – of course – red wine are all good sources of resveratrol. You can also find it in supplement form in many health food stores.

[Ed. Note: Sometimes the difference between poor and good health is simply knowing the right supplements to take. Learn how you can start to feel better and get healthier right here.

For more about the supplements you should and shouldn't be taking, visit www.RaySahelian.com, the website of Ray Sahelian, MD, internationally recognized as a moderate voice in the evaluation of natural supplements and the author of Mind Boosters.]

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The Language Perfectionist: Reject Redundancies

By Don Hauptman

A common type of misuse is redundancy, also known as tautology or pleonasm. Here are some examples, drawn from print and online sources:

• "I hope that your advance planning has brought you the sense of security and peace of mind that comes with knowing that everything is as it should be." (The word planning presupposes that it is done in advance.)

• "What appears in Wikipedia is not always necessarily a true fact." (By definition, a fact is always true. Thus, avoid saying false fact, too.)

• "Before long, emoticons had accomplished what Esperanto never could: establish a universal lingua franca." (The term lingua franca means universal language.)

• "The track proceeds past a rock shelter on the left to the open summit… from whence there are excellent views." (The word whence means "from where.")

• "Don’t you think Germans were sitting around having this exact same conversation about their country during Hitler’s rise to power?" (The word same means identical.)

Argumentative readers might dispute my interpretations by citing liberal dictionary definitions or by claiming that certain phrases were not redundant centuries ago. They may have a case, but these locutions are still best avoided. They add more words than necessary. They’re awkward, clunky, and cliched. Finally, some people are irritated by such linguistic tics as "tiny little" and "screaming and yelling."

Of course, we copywriters are not immune to criticism on this point, especially for the frequent use of the marketing promise "free gift."

[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book forthcoming from AWAI, that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into critiquing, consulting, training, and speaking.]

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It’s Fun to Know: Whale Milk

Newborn whales (calves) feast on their mothers’ milk after they’re born, just like every mammal does. But there’s no low-fat milk in the ocean. Whale milk, which is 50 percent fat, has 10 times the fat content of human milk. The high fat content allows young whales to attain growth spurts of 200 pounds per day.

(Source: Mental Floss)

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Word to the Wise: Interpolate

To "interpolate"- from the Latin for "to polish up," hence to falsify – is to insert new or foreign material into a text or conversation.

Example (as used by Richard Corliss in Time magazine): "Twenty years earlier, [Richard] Rodgers was not so pleased when, at the request of the star Belle Baker, [Irving] Berlin had written a song for her to interpolate into an otherwise all-Rodgers-and-Hart score for the Broadway musical ‘Betsy.’"

[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]

Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008

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