Better Flight Prices

If you don't have the time or inclination to wade through hundreds of sites, read newsletters, tweets and set up email alerts to get the absolute best fares - there is now a service that does all this for you. It is called Flightfox. The catch - you have to pay upfront but you get a 25% discount on the fee by clicking here.

It will cost you about $25 but they'll refund you that if they don't save you at least that much on what you can find yourself. Best for multistop around the world type stuff than just point to point.

Not free but save you some $$$$

Enjoy.

Adventure Centre have a program for the Travel lover and expert to Travel for Free

I recently came across the Adventure Center's:

Independent Adventure Expert Program!

I haven't personally applied and it is potentially only US based but probably something worth of consideration for anyone with a lot of connections, friends, fans or followers. If you can't pull a full group together as outlined in the initial posts on the blog - then here is a good fallback that still earns you some cash so you can travel for free.

Urban Adventures Opportunity

It's not entirely clear what they are doing but it certainly looks like some sort of free travel opportunity. The sign up to find out is here.

Tripalertz does it again with a whopping $50 in Trip Cash just for being a member

TRIP CASH FOR ALL. AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT.

We’re giving you $50 Trip Cash for being so good all year.

Hey there! We wanted to remind you about the $50 in Trip Cash we gifted "You", our loyal members with, last week. With the New Year fast approaching we wanted to get you a little something for being good members all year. So visit the site to redeem your gift on any future booking between now and January 31, 2012. It’s our way of saying Happy New Year!

Add a little cheer to friends & family!

Give them $25 Trip Cash for joining.

Just sign up your family or friends this holiday season and we’ll give them $25 Trip Cash just for joining. And you’ll get $5 Trip Cash for every person who joins in your stocking as well. So spread the cheer this holiday season with the gift that helps you get away.

Tripalertz now giving $10 in Trip Cash for each referral

UPDATE: 20/10 - this deal has now expired. Its back down to $1.......

That's right people - the crew over at Tripalertz have upped the ante by now giving away a record $10 in Trip Cash for every person you refer.

At that rate it should take no time for you to be travelling for free.

Good luck.

The problem with being a travel blogger......

There are lots of interesting posts out there about the ups and downs of travel blogging.

The main problem I find here on the Travel for Free blog is that when you are off travelling for free - you forget to post! I don't want to bore you with my travel stories in this forum as I want this be a resource just for those looking for the great ways to be able to travel the world without having to go out of their way to earn the money to do so.

The good news is that my time in the hammock was not a total bust for fans of this blog. I've put together a step by step guide on how to automate your income whilst travelling. Free to set up, crazily easy to get going and without 1 cent of of up front investment. It is too long for a blog post so I'll put it together in a down-loadable eBook for you to save, print and enjoy.

Be sure to sign up to updates of this blog to know when it is coming out. It will of course be free (at least to those subscribed to this blog).

Stay tuned.

Tripalertz does it again with more ways to Travel for Free

Followers of this blog will have already cashed in on some of the previous ways that Tripalertz, the "Groupon of Travel" startup, have offered in the past. Unfortunately the $5 for each member signed up offer has now expired and it is back to $1 per sign up. Hopefully you have plenty of cash in the bank already to use when the perfect deal for you comes along.

All is not lost however if you want to get yourself travelling for free even quicker. Tripalertz also has a trip suggestion box where if your trip idea gets the most votes - you get to go on the trip for free! Here is how they describe it on their website:

"Submit a Trip Idea for a Chance to win a Free Trip.

Below are the best Trip Ideas submitted by the community.

1. Vote on you favorite Trip Ideas by clicking 'I love it!'
2. On July 1, 2011, the ideas with the most votes become deals on the site, so invite your friends and earn Trip Cash while you're at it!
3. The person who submits the idea with the most votes travels for free.

You may only vote once for each idea. Happy Travels!"

All you need to do therefore is to sign up if you haven't already, submit your trip idea and then get all your friends to also sign up to vote for it. Get the most votes and you are travelling for Free! The current top vote scorer has 371 votes (as of 19 March) so if you have more friends than that on your Facebook - get on it. You also as a bonus still get $1 for everyone of those who sign up.

Get to Tripalertz by clicking here.

Happy Free Travels!

Getting commitment from your fellow travelers so you can Travel for Free

I've had quite a few people now contact me all with a a similar problem. They get a lot of people excited about the idea of a group trip away together but when it comes time to commit they have problems getting those same people to front up with the cash.

Essentially this is the biggest problem you can face. Nobody has had a problem coming up with a trip that excites people or finding a travel company to deal on that itinerary. The blocker is just getting friends and acquaintances to actually fork over the cash when the time comes. Most frustratingly is that it seems many people make the right noises right up to the due date and back out right when you need to get the cash across to the travel company to make it all happen. At this point it is too late to find replacements and the whole thing goes bust. This is not only disappointing for you but probably even more so for those who like you were fully committed and totally excited. Will they trust you again to organize something?

I have too different strategies to help you alleviate these problems. They are both about creating transparency in the process.

The first is probably pretty obvious but you need to create an online place for the group to communicate so that at worst, committed travelers can see exactly the level of commitment from others in the group, as opposed to emailing, phoning and texting around to everyone individually. Contacting people individually as the only means of communication puts way too much pressure on you as the organizer to convey everyone's level of commitment to the rest of the group. The simplest and most effective method is to create a Facebook page for the trip and invite people from there. Once people "like" the trip they will get updates from you when you post info into the page status update right into their regular news feed. This allows you to continually touch the group and keep the idea fresh. Encourage others to post their thoughts so there is a public record of enthusiasm or otherwise. The page also creates scarcity. If there are 10 spots and 100 people 'like' the page then in theory 90 are going to miss out - which can induce a quicker commitment to the available places.

The second tip is to put the trip up on OBaz . OBaz is an online resource that allows you to put your trip online and receive payment - including credit card payment - for the trip funds. There is only one type of commitment that means anything in the end and that is cash in the bank. Travelers pay their funds and secure their place. Make it clear that you can't hold places for anyone. First 8, 9 or 10 with cash deposited are in. Everyone can go to the private group record to see who has paid and how many spots are left. You can also post this up into the above Facebook page, which saves you from the endless and inevitable questions of whether the trip will run or not. The facts are all there for people to see, online and delivered to a place they visit regularly anywhere - their Facebook page.

Hope this helps get you out on the road for Free!

Travel For Free - Why Bother? The road to Home Exchange.

A few of the people who have been following this blog have asked the question - why do you bother going through all this humbug just to get a free trip somewhere. It seems like hard work organizing a trip and being the point of first contact for 7, 8, 9 people and their questions about the trip. This is true. It isn't super easy. For me, I am a travel maven. For 15 years I have thought about little else except where I would travel to, how I would get there and what I would do there. For work I go through these exact questions on behalf of others creating product for a travel company. I eat, drink and sleep travel.

In the early days I would get a job, work for 8 months or so saving as much as possible, quit and then head off for 12 months or so. Once I learned the tricks I would get a job, work for 8 months or so saving as much as possible, not quit, head off for a month or so on a free trip and put the money saved in the bank.

On my travels I always on the look out for my own little Utopia in the world. A couple of years ago whilst on a trip through Central America, I found it. It is in virgin jungle, surrounded by timid families of monkeys and sitting above one of the best surf breaks in Central America. Designed by a British architect and built by skilled tradesmen - it is everything we hoped and dreamed of. Best of all, by Traveling for Free, we could pay cash for it from our travel money saved.

Now we a have a little haven to escape to, a place we can rent out to cover our costs and best of all a quality house we can use to swap with other people all over the world in the same situation for FREE! Check here to see our listing on the Home Exchange site and have a look around at some of the other properties that you can swap for. We happily have found a way to stay in some amazing homes, almost anywhere in the world for free.

It has been worth the bother.

Happy free travels.

Intrepid Travel are giving away the best Free Trip ever.

All you need to do is to 'like' the Intrepid Facebook page and invite 10 friends you would like to take on an African Safari. If they all 'like' the page as well you all go into the draw to win a private African safari including all flight costs valued at $55K. That is huge!!!!

Tripalertz now give you $5 for every friend sign up to get you traveling for Free faster.

Our last post was all about the new tech start-up Tripalertz, that will no doubt quickly revolutionize the way the savvy holiday shoppers buy their holidays. At that point they were giving $1 in travel cash for every sign up referral.

They are trying to accelerate the membership base. The thing with crowd sourced selling is you need a crowd to make it work. With strong angel and investment funding they are now giving you $5 for every friend who signs up. Get 100 friends involved and you are traveling for free yourself.

Get started by following the link here and signing up.

Like anything new - the earlier you get on it the better you will do.

Happy Free Travels.

Another new way to Travel For Free - I think this one will be BIG!

Have you ever heard of Groupon? If you haven't it is essentially a site that offers a deal a day provided a certain number of people sign up for it. The deals are usually pretty amazing and are almost always fully subscribed. For the businesses involved it is all about lead generation, creating return customers and part of their marketing plan and not their sales plan. The last point is important because the deals on offer are usually at BELOW COST for the seller. They make a loss on each sale.

Of course at the Travel for Free blog we are not that interested in great deals. We want our stuff FREE. And Groupon is not specifically travel related although it has been used by the likes of urbanadventures.com in some locations.

So what has this all got to do with free travel? A new kid on the tech start up block is a crew called Tripalertz. Their concept is the same as Groupon but they are totally focused on travel. Great deals at around or below cost but still not free. Except the whole business model for these "buy in bulk and save" web businesses is that the deals are crowd sourced and in order to work they require - well a crowd. Tripalertz have managed to pick up some high quality media exposure already and so the crowd is starting to form but to reach the tipping point they need to engage social media and recruit recruiters. This is where the FREE bit for you comes in.

For every person you convince to sign up to Tripalertz you receive $1 in credit to spend on their deals (which as mentioned are cheap!). The difference between this method of crowd sourcing for free travel and that in the original post of this blog is that here you need about 1000 friends to sign up so you can travel for free whereas by following the method in the original post you only need to convince 7, 8 or 9 friends. The possible advantage for the Tripalertz method is you don't have to do a group trip and if you like you can travel alone if you prefer.

To find out more go to Tripalertz by clicking here.

Quick follow up to the Travel Free and Easy in NYC post......

Today I think I hit the mother load!

Go to goby.com and where it says what you want to do - type in "free" and for the place type in "NYC" - leave the when as "anytime". Wow.

If you can wade your way through the gluten-free restaurants that pop up - there is so much free stuff going on. Nightclubs every night FREE for simply using the Forbidden List password, free drinks, free night time bike rides through Central Park and on it goes. It all seemed current info as well.

It's a nice little search engine they've got going on down at team Goby.

Oh and when you are sick of free stuff in NYC you can get out of there for FREE to Hartford Conn. or Amherst, Mass with megabus.com - Use promo code NEWNYC for free tickets to or from New York City (thaks to Travelzoo)

The Holy Grail of Free Travel - Free flights

Since I started this series of blogs, the overwhelming question I've been asked is about flying for free. It is the subject that raises the most questions and unfortunately seems to have the fewest answers.

I am currently researching the courier angle on free flights because it is not something I've done personally and in fact I've never even met one person who has actually physically done it themselves. It seems like a bit of a mythical beast or perhaps and more likely a closed shop for those in the know - a bit like those wonderful surf breaks that take of bit of effort to get to and are never ever spoken about in public, let alone blogged about. I'm getting closer to the magic circle of courier flights and will post all I can find out once I've got the information first hand.

There are a few internet flight Gurus which if you are passionate about your free travel, you've probably already stumbled across. The Frequent Flyer Master is one and in general they all offer very similar advice - advice that you have to pay for as it is sold as book. I guess the bonus of the Frequent Flyer Master is that if you buy that guide, sign up to their affiliate program and then convince others to buy it as well, through your own blog or website you only need two other people to buy it, to get your own investment back. As we are committed to free as our guiding principle, this blog and the link above are not part of the affiliate program.

The Frequent flyer method almost never gets you free flights. Their are annual fees for most frequent flyer programs and the rapid accumulation of points strategies usually mean signing up to credit cards or other programs which also have annual fees, to accelerate your points gained. It can be cheap but not free. We have a credit card that is associated with an airline. We use the card for all our purchases every month and accumulate points but rarely if ever buy goods or services we wouldn't normally purchase just to get extra points. We end up with a free short return flight each every couple of years at the cost of $75 per year in membership fees. So $150 for 4 flights (2 return flights). Flying on a budget airline over the same route with a bit of planning would really only cost $50 - $100 more. All in all it is a bit of a scam.

There is one other strategy to fly for free that gets a lot less airplay. I've timed this post so that those who are flying back home for Thanksgiving can give this a try in the next week or so. This strategy works on the premise that almost all airlines overbook their (domestic) flights when they can because they know in general there will be a no show rate of around 2-3% for every flight. For a plane the has 200 seats, an airline will sell about 206 seats if it can. I mention Thanksgiving because it is the weekend where the most flights are likely to be full and because I've successfully done this myself on the Thanksgiving weekend.

By now you will most likely have already bought your flight home (or you will be paying a lot of money if you haven't.) What you need to do is to turn up at least two hours before your flight and check in as normal. It works best if you are only taking carry on luggage. Once checked in, head to your departure gate , go the counter and say that should the plane be overbooked you'd be happy to look at other options and give them your name. On Thanksgiving weekend you have probably got a 60-75% chance of being paged and asked if you can switch flights. This is where the negotiation begins. They will have a maximum number they can go to in terms of compensation and your job is to get as close as you can to that amount. In my case I was flying from NYC to St. Paul. To switch flights and wait 2 and a half more hours in the airport for the next flight I got $350 in credits for a future flight (the initial offer was $200), upgrade to business on that flight and coupons for a meal in the airport. My initial return flight cost $140. I therefore had $210 of totally free flights to use. I did this twice in the year and ended up with $400 in free flights which I used on a free flight to Guatemala and return flight from Costa Rica which I teamed with a free Way to San Jose trip that I sorted out using the method described in the original post of this blog.

Airlines are greedy. They pay agents next to no commission and they almost never give anything away for free. However you can use their greed against them by following the above and then you too can fly for free!

Happy Free Flying.

Topdeck have a Travel For Free section on their website

The latest company we have found giving away free trips as per the method outlined in the original post of this blog is Topdeck. You can see how to travel for free with Topdeck here.