You know the feeling and sadly so do I… You dream of the day when the perfect airline ticket comes along at a price well in your range and by the time you find out about it, it’s gone. Today there were opportunities to fly around the world in business and first class for between $360-$1200 U.S. Dollars all in, round trip. They came, they left quickly and airlines were sent panicking. Yes, seriously, you could fly from places like the United States, Europe, South America and more to almost all of those destinations and others for less than most pay for the leg cruncher on a simple round trip. You just had to act fast…
So.. What’s the point? The point is that you need to become amongst the first to know. It’s like anything major, you don’t just walk up and make it overnight. I’ve spent over a decade perfecting my craft and I still miss out on things. In talking with a few others and honing some thoughts I’ve decided to share some tips on how you can take advantage as well. This post offers the best possible tips available to get timely notifications, emails or texts about things before it’s too late and you are forced to hang your head in shame, AGAIN. My relevance is not based on deals alone and I am happy to send you to the hard working people who find and source them. Come back to me for the whitty banter, flight reviews, using miles and the how to’s of the game.
Push Notifications…
I’m developing a service to push notifications from all the sources listed below and more directly to your mobile device home screen. Until then, you can still receive standard notifications from the best deal sites and the best ways to do that are with Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully if you’re reading this, you’ve already “Liked” GodSaveThePoints on Facebook. What you might not know is that after “liking” a page, you can receive notifications whenever they post something new without opening the app. I personally receive notifications from The Flight Deal, Secret Flying and SkyScanner. And yes, myself too. To receive notifications while in the “app”, touch the top right corner of a post (like this one) and press get notifications. The TRUE best way to do this is on desktop so if you can be bothered to pull out the old macbook,” like” a page and then click the drop down next to “like” and press “get notifications”. It will only help.
As to Twitter, simply “follow” someone and then in the top right corner of the screen you will see a “settings” logo next to the “following” icon. Touch the settings button next to the icon and select “turn on notifications”. You’ll now be getting notifications pushed right to your phone with a nice buzz to let you know the best deal ever might just have landed.
Flyertalk Mileage Run/Premium Fare Subscription
Flyertalk has two places which more often than not are the source of the deals you see picked up on many blogs including mine. It’s the nuts and bolts of the frequent flier, cheap flier and want to travel business class or better without paying much for it world, which I subscribe to. I subscribe via email to both the Premium Fare Forum for business and first class deals and Mileage Run forum which offers the same for economy tickets. The trick? When you get an email with updates you must click the link in the email to see said updates before a new email will generate (Thanks Gary Leff for the insider tip). Don’t miss out by being lazy. Because I am in fact lazy, I additionally put a bookmark of the pages on the home screen of my phone and regularly click over whenever I am reading an email or text. Time is truly of the essence as many found out yesterday with the £1200 British AIrways First class fares to Sydney and the American fares to just about anywhere in the world in business class for $360!
RSS feeds
I am thrilled to receive thousands of readers every day but surprisingly not many are signed up to our RSS feed. RSS feeds, essentially a feed of all things you subscribe to are a great way to get notifications or awareness of new posts from different sources as they happen. My personal RSS feed features all the deal sites mentioned above plus a few others I like including such as ViewFromTheWing and various online ticketing sites like CheapOair, SkyScanner etc. Find a RSS feed reader you like such as “feedly” and get started by adding feeds from my blog, the deal blogs and online ticketing agencies to see all the good stuff in one place.
I Hate The Word Networking…But Networking.
I’m certainly not in it for the money! One “perk” of the job is that readers regularly and very kindly pass on deals, interesting posts and just about anything related to flying and life. As such I am often presented with things from other sources that I may have missed. Maybe there’s a deal from a South American site I don’t follow or an Australian ticketing site is having currency problems and things are pricing out for a fraction of the price. If you have any other passionate friends in the hobby consider setting up an email chain and share what you’re seeing with the group. They may have missed whatever you are seeing and they will certainly want to buy you a beer after they take the whole family on vacation like royalty for next to nothing!
Everything I have, you have. These are my best insights to staying current with real time deals and offers. I will be putting in some elbow grease to create a private notification service for anyone who wants it for when deals do occur drawing from these sources. It will take some time but if you would like in, please email and let me know. I want the best for everyone.
As Always, Get in Touch: GodSaveThePoints@gmail.com
