White Sands Balloon Festival. Photo taken in New Mexico, USA by Marcee B.

Editor’s note: This post contains affiliate links.

Has the economy forced you to reconsider your travel plans for 2009?

Over the past few weeks, Tammie Dooley from Solo Road Trip has shown how you can save your pennies and still have a great holiday, campground-style.

But if that doesn’t suffice – if you have an irrepressible desire to fly somewhere, near or far – take a look at Elizabeth Sanberg’s guide to finding cheap airline tickets.

How to Find Cheap Airline Tickets is a straight-forward guide designed to help you save time and money. It’s about showing that travel is financially feasible for pretty much everyone.

Elizabeth is the co-founder of Go Green Travel Green, a website that helps conscientious travellers take simple steps to travel greener. This book has been a long time coming: according to Elizabeth, it’s been in the works for two years.

At a glance, here’s what it covers:

• The 2 Biggest Myths about Finding Cheap Airfare
• 8 (+ 3) Money Saving Tips
• Cheating the System with Buy and Hold
• The Cardinal Rule for Finding Cheap Airline Tickets
• How to Determine if You’ve Found a “Good” Deal
• A Customized 5 Step System for Finding the Cheapest Airfares for “Regular” Flights
• 3 More Systems for Searching when you have Flexibility
• The Master Search Engine that Travel Insiders Use

The guide also comes with a cheat sheet outlining which travel search engines you should use depending on your circumstances; and two worksheets to help you track airfares.

How to Find Cheap Airline Tickets is similar to Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare, which I reviewed last year. But if Chris’ guide was about unconventional ways to trim the dollars off your airfare, Elizabeth’s book goes into more conventional methods at a greater depth. If you’re serious about saving money on your flights, I think the two books complement each other quite nicely.

The book is priced at $19.99. If you buy it and decide it isn’t for you, there’s a 100 day, 100% cash back guarantee.

Buy now for $19.99: How to Find Cheap Airline Tickets.

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Other e-books written by travel bloggers:

• The Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfares by Chris Guillebeau
• The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself by Chris Guillebeau
• Travelling Europe: Indie Travel Guide by Craig Martin (currently priced at only $5.95!)

© Gretchen Wilson-Kalav for TravelBlogs, 2009. | How to Find Cheap Airline Tickets (E-Book Review) | 4 comments |
Post categories: Book Reviews
Post tags: budget travel, discount airfare, travel ebooks

Pisa Cathedral, Italy. Photo by Joy from ItalyShoppe.

So you’ve got your tickets booked: you’re going to Europe! It’s your first trip to the Old World, but you’re psyched about seeing the Eiffel Tower, taking a gondola on the canals of Venice and strolling through the cobbled streets of Prague.

But the hardest part about planning a trip isn’t figuring out where you want to go – it’s the details. You need to work out how to get from place to place, how much you should budget per day, what the visa requirements are, or which airlines you should use. And that’s just the start of it.

If you’ve never planned a trip before, this can be a difficult and discouraging process. At this point, some people buy into a package vacation. It’s the easy way out. But you want to do things your way, as an independent traveller.

Travelling Europe is a guide for people who need help figuring out the nitty gritty details of travelling around Europe. It’s not going to tell you where you should go – though there is a section about unusual European destinations you should consider visiting. Instead, this guide answers the questions most commonly asked by first-time travellers:

• How can I research my trip?
• Can I afford it?
• What are the visa requirements for visiting Europe?
• Can I work in Europe?
• Can I teach English to fund my travels?
• Where should I stay?
• How should I get around?
• How can I research transport?
• Should I get a Eurail pass?
• What should I look for in a budget airline?
• Should I learn another language? Which ones?
• What to try? Can I drink the water?

There are also handy sections about solo female travel, family travel and travelling as a couple.

The guide is written by Craig Martin, whose blog/podcast Indie Travel Podcast is a featured blog on TravelBlogs. One of the great advantages of Travelling Europe is it’s based on real, first-hand experiences. Craig and his wife Linda made their way around Europe on a shoestring budget from March 2006 to October 2008, so you know they know what they’re talking about. And because he couldn’t write with much authority about solo female travel or family travel, Craig pulled in two great guest writers who do know about those topics.

There are two versions of the guide: the written, pdf version and the audio version. Personally, I prefer reading, and the ebook is well written, designed professionally and looks good printed off. But if you’re not the reading type, you can load the guide onto your iPod and listen to it on the way to work.

Whichever you choose, the guide comes with free updates for life and a full money back guarantee: “Our Indie Travel Guarantee promises that you’ll find this useful and learn some tricks that you didn’t know before. If you don’t think that’s the case then we’ll refund your money. It’s that simple.”

At $5.95 for the e-book, this is an absolutely bargain. If you choose to go for both the e-book and audio version, it’s only $9.95.

Buy the eBook, audio book or both now: Travelling Europe

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Other E-Books written by travel bloggers:

• The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself by Chris Guillebeau
• The Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfares by Chris Guillebeau
• How to Find Cheap Airline Tickets by Elizabeth Sanberg

© Gretchen Wilson-Kalav for TravelBlogs, 2009. | Travelling Europe: Indie Travel Guide (Review) | 2 comments |
Post categories: Book Reviews
Post tags: budget travel, Europe, independent travel, travel ebooks, travel guide

Editor’s note: This article contains affiliate links.

In the last 6 years, Chris Guillebeau has traveled to 83 countries. Sound expensive? It’s not as bad as you’d think.

On average, Chris paid only $342 for each of his flights.

In his new e-book, The Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare, Chris shares the strategies and tactics which have allowed him to travel so much for so little.

It comes at a perfect time, with rising oil costs pushing up ticket prices and airlines slapping on all sorts of hidden extra charges.

Chris shares his firsthand knowledge on everything from how to hitch a ride on a plane to how to get instant elite status with airlines like American Airlines, Continental, Delta and more. At a glance, here’s what’s included in the 29-page book:

• Surviving Travel in North America: A look at the budget airlines available in North America, tips on how to get airline lounge access, as well as how to get instant elite status with American Airlines and other airlines.
• Beyond Travelocity: A detailed look at other online options for booking flights, including advice on how to hitch a ride on an airplane.
• Alternative Routings, Free Stopovers, and Unusual Ideas: Specific tips on ways to maximize your flying experience through little-known alternative routes and free stopover options.
• Contrarian Travel: Suggestions for ways to save money by going against the grain, including a section on how to get free rental cars.
• Surviving Euroshock in Europe: Practical advice for US travelers suffering the poor exchange rate with the Euro.
• Across the Pacific: A look at cheap ways to travel to and around Asia, with tips on discount airlines and alternative routes.
• Premium Travel: Suggestions on how you can get out of Economy class without spending more money.
• Awards Tickets: Strategies to maximize the benefit of your awards program.
• Faraway Places: Chris has extensive experience traveling through Africa, Latin America and Australia and the South Pacific, and here he shares some advice on cheaper ways of traveling around these regions.
• Round the World and Regional Passes: An excellent overview of different RTW options and regional passes you can use to see more of the world for the same amount of money.

That’s what’s included now – Chris will be updating the e-book in the future, offering free updates to anyone who purchases the e-book now.

The only drawback to Chris’ guide is that it is geared towards readers from the USA or Canada, which leaves the rest of us wishing for more. But if you’re North American, the book is definitely worth the investment.

TravelBlogs readers can take advantage of a special $5 discount offer on the e-book, bringing the total price under $20. If you have a few flights planned, I have no doubt that Chris’ strategies and tactics will help you save a lot more money than that.

On the off-chance that you don’t like it, Chris is offering a full refund for anyone who feels the e-book isn’t worth the $20. There’s no time limit on that guarantee. I guess he’s confident in his product!

To take advantage of the TravelBlogs discount, quote TB as your discount code. You can download a 2-page sample of the guide here.

Buy now for $19.97: The Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare

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Other E-Books written by travel bloggers:

• The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself by Chris Guillebeau
• Travelling Europe: Indie Travel Guide by Craig Martin (currently priced at only $5.95!)
• How to Find Cheap Airline Tickets by Elizabeth Sanberg

© Gretchen Wilson-Kalav for TravelBlogs, 2008. | The Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare (E-Book Review) | No comment |
Post categories: Book Reviews
Post tags: discount airfares, Perpetual Travel, travel ebooks