#my inbox. there was no sign of brazil on its own. i have no idea where that ask went

[have-you-been-here]

Brazil, Earth

Submitted by @axsdvfmnjh

[cant-get-no-worse]

The situation with Gavi and Spain fans has really rattled me and got me thinking. It is shameful that they are treating this 18 year old boy who is the same age as me the way they are. He deserves respect for the way he gives his all for his club and his country and to see his efforts be rewarded in such ways is just sad. For me, those “fans” who are treating him the way they are aren’t really fans at all and I have no respect for them. This situation also got me thinking about what football, both club and country, mean to me because I simply cannot comprehend hating on your own player who won a trophy for you so enjoy this brain vomit of mine.

How do I perceive football and what does it mean to me?

Football is the whole country holding its breath during the penalty shootout. It’s the sweet taste of victory and the disappointment of defeat. It’s celebrating every medal like it’s gold because our players have given their all and deserve to feel how proud they made us. It’s watching football in school because of the winter World Cup. It’s driving towards my grandparents house during Brazil-Croatia game and not being able to sit still while listening to live commentary. It’s my mum agreeing to let me put on a football match(even though she would like to watch something else)because she knows how much I want to watch it. It’s Croatian football songs playing at 9am the day of the match. It’s believing we play better in white and red checkered kits. It’s Luka Modrić 10 and Leo Messi 10 at the same time. It’s me(who is a Barca fan through and through) and my friend(who bleeds Madrid white) sitting side by side on the bus while coming home from swim competition and watching El Classico at one shared phone. It’s the bragging rights each of us gets for a day when our team wins. It’s me losing my mind at stunts Gavi pulls and her laughing her head off at my reaction. It’s her congratulating me on Barca winning La Liga and me congratulating her on Madrid’s UCL run this year. It’s her hoping we sign Messi(when it still seemed like it would happen) and me hoping that Madrid manage to sign Bellingham (because she was really excited about the idea of it even before it was a reality ). It’s me and my other friend (who is City fan) shit talking one another’s club just to rile each other up but agreeing that Pep is the best. It her already planning to visit me in London so we can watch some City away game even tho I still have to get the grades for my offer to even be sure I’m going to be studying there next year. It’s me rattling out stats for any player my guy friend ask me about and getting their respect. It’s me checking the scores of the games while preparing for my exams and having a silly victory dance when we score. It’s the beginning in love with Barca’s defense and midfield and attack and defending them even when they suck. It’s the pain of saying goodbye to Camp Nou and the happiness of having had the chance to see it as it was. It’s the brightness of the future that lies ahead of this Barca team and the happiness that I will be there to witness it. Its every Visca Barca and Visca Catalunya. It’s the pride and the joy and the love. It’s the beautiful game. 

Sorry for sending in such a long ask which isn't even an ask but I wanted to share my thoughts with someone and you have such a beautiful paragraphs about Messi and Barca that I thought you might appreciate it🥲

I've kept that ask a few days in my inbox just to re-read it; it makes me proud and joyful to have created such space were you feel you can write this. Thank you for sharing this beautiful bits of your life, these bridges thrown, connections created, memories formed at such odd little corner stones of our lives that make futbol, ultimately, more than just shouting at some 22 players on a field. Also serves to remind us, although the institution is ugly to look at, although these players often disappoint us, that ultimately it's not about them, but above the sport itself. 💕

[cvrnewsdirectindia]

Digital privacy at stake? 10 Tips to avoid leaving tracks around internet

Google and Facebook collect information about us and then sell that data to advertisers. Websites deposit invisible “cookies” onto our computers and then record where we go online. Even our own government has been known to track us.

When it comes to digital privacy, it’s easy to feel hopeless. We’re mere mortals! We’re minuscule molecules in their machines! What power do we possibly have to fight back?

That was the question I posed to you, dear readers, in the previous “Crowdwise.”

Many of you responded with valuable but frequently repeated suggestions: Use a program that memorizes your passwords, and make every password different. Install an ad blocker in your web browser, like uBlock Origin. Read up on the latest internet scams. If you must use Facebook, visit its Privacy Settings page and limit its freedom to target ads to you.

What I sought, though, was non-obvious ideas.

It turns out that “digital privacy” means different things to different people.

“Everyone has different concerns,” wrote Jamie Winterton, a cybersecurity researcher at Arizona State University. “Are you worried about private messaging? Government surveillance? Third-party trackers on the web?” Addressing each of these concerns, she noted, requires different tools and techniques.

Duck Google

“The number one thing that people can do is to stop using Google,” wrote privacy consultant Bob Gellman. “If you use Gmail and use Google to search the web, Google know more about you than any other institution. And that goes double if you use other Google services like Google Maps, Waze, Google Docs, etc.”

Like many other readers, he recommended DuckDuckGo, a rival web search engine. Its search results often aren’t as useful as Google’s, but it’s advertised not to track you or your searches.

And if you don’t use Gmail for email, what should you use? “I am a huge advocate for paying for your email account,” wrote Russian journalist Yuri Litvinenko. “It’s not about turning off ads, but giving your email providers as little incentive to peek into your inbox as possible.” ProtonMail, for example, costs $4 a month and offers a host of privacy features, including anonymous sign-up and end-to-end encryption.

Jam Google

The ads you see online are based on the sites, searches, or and Facebook posts that get your interest. Some rebels therefore throw a wrench into the machinery — by demonstrating phony interests.

“Every once in a while, I Google something completely nutty just to mess with their algorithm,” wrote Shaun Breidbart. “You’d be surprised what sort of coupons CVS prints for me on the bottom of my receipt. They are clearly confused about both my age and my gender.”

It’s “akin to radio jamming,” noted Frank Paiano. “It does make for some interesting browsing, as ads for items we searched for follow us around like puppy dogs (including on The New York Times, by the way.)”

Barry Joseph uses a similar tactic when registering for an account on a new website. “I often switch my gender (I am a cisgender male), which delivers ads less relevant to me — although I must admit, the bra advertising can be distracting.”

He notes that there are side effects. “My friends occasionally get gendered notifications about me, such as ‘Wish her a happy birthday.’” But even that is a plus, leading to “interesting conversations about gender norms and expectations (so killing two birds with one digital stone here).”

Avoid unnecessary web tracking

It’s perfectly legitimate, by the way, to enjoy seeing ads that align with your interests. You could argue that they’re actually more useful than irrelevant ones.

But millions of others are creeped out by the tracking that produces those targeted ads.

If you’re in that category, Ms. Winterton recommended Ghostery, a free plug-in for most web browsers that “blocks the trackers and lists them by category,” she wrote. “Some sites have an amazing number of trackers whose only purpose is to record your behavior (sometimes across multiple sites) and pitch better advertisements.”

Careful on public Wi-Fi

Most public Wi-Fi networks — in hotels, airports, coffee shops, and so on — are eavesdroppable, even if they require a password to connect. Nearby patrons, using their phones or laptops, can easily see everything you’re sending or receiving — email and website contents, for example — using free “sniffer” programs.

You don’t have to worry about Social, WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessages, all of which encrypt your messages before they even leave your phone or laptop. Using websites whose addresses begin with https are also safe; they, too, encrypt their data before it’s sent to your browser (and vice versa).

(Caution: Even if the site’s address begins with https, the bad guys can still see which sites you visit — say, https://www.NoseHairBraiding.com. They just can’t see what you do there once you’re connected.)

The solution, as recommended by Lauren Taubman and others: a Virtual Private Network program. These phone and computer apps encrypt everything you send or receive — and, as a bonus, mask your location. Wirecutter’s favorite VPN, TunnelBear, is available for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. It’s free for up to 500 megabytes a month, or $60 a year for up to five devices.

Use Apple

“I don’t like Apple’s phones, their operating systems, or their looks,” wrote Aaron Soice, “but the one thing Apple gets right is valuing your data security. Purely in terms of data, Apple serves you; Google serves you to the sharks.”

Apple’s privacy website reveals many examples: You don’t sign into Apple Maps or Safari (Apple’s web browser), so your searches and trips aren’t linked to you. Safari’s “don’t track me” features are turned on as the factory setting. When you buy something with Apple Pay, Apple receives no information about the item, the store, or the price.

Apple can afford to tout these features, explained software developer Joel Potischman, because it’s a hardware company. “Its business model depends on us giving them our money. Google and Facebook make their money by selling our info to other people.”

Don’t “Sign in with Facebook”

Mr. Potischman never registers with a new website using the “Sign in with Facebook” or “Sign in with Google” shortcut buttons. “They allow those companies to track you on other sites,” he wrote. Instead, he registers the long way, with an email address and password.

(And here’s Apple again: The “Sign in with Apple” button, new and not yet incorporated by many websites, is designed to offer the same one-click convenience — but with a promise not to track or profile you.)

Identity theft, from a pro

My call for submissions drew some tips from a surprising respondent: Frank Abagnale, the former teenage con artist who was the subject of the 2002 movie “Catch Me if You Can.”

After his prison time, he went began working for the F.B.I., giving talks on scam protection, and writing books. He’s donating all earnings from his latest book, “Scam Me If You Can,” to the AARP, in support of its efforts to educate older Americans about internet rip-offs.

His advice: “You never want to tell Facebook where you were born and your date of birth. That’s 98 percent of someone stealing your identity! And don’t use a straight-on photo of yourself — like a passport photo, driver’s license, graduation photo — that someone can use on a fake ID.”

Mr. Abagnale also notes that you should avoid sharing your personal data offline, too. “We give a lot of information away, not just on social media, but places we go where people automatically ask us all of these questions. ‘What magazines do you read?’ ‘What’s your job?’ ‘Do you earn between this and that amount of money?’”

Why answer if you don’t have to?

The lightning round

A few more suggestions:

“Create a different email address for every service you use,” wrote Matt McHenry. “Then you can tell which one has shared your info, and create filters to silence them if necessary.”

“Apps like Privacy and Token Virtual generate a disposable credit-card number with each purchase — so in case of a breach, your actual card isn’t compromised,” suggested Juan Garrido. (Bill Barnes agreed, pointing out the similar Shopsafe service offered by from Bank of America’s Visa cards. “The number is dollar and time limited.”)

“Your advertisers won’t like to see this, so perhaps you won’t print it,” predicted Betsy Peto, “but I avoid using apps on my cellphone as much as possible. Instead, I go to the associated website in my phone’s browser: for example, www.dailybeast.com. My data is still tracked there, but not as much as it would be by the app.”

There is some good news: Tech companies are beginning to feel some pressure.

In 2017, the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (G.D.P.R.), which requires companies to explain what data they’re collecting — and to offer the option to edit or delete it. China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Korea and Thailand have passed, or are considering, similar laws, and California’s Consumer Privacy Act takes effect on January 1.

In the meantime, enjoy these suggestions, as well as this bonus tip from privacy researcher Jamie Winterton:

“Oh yeah — and don’t use Facebook.”

For the next “Crowdwise”: We all know that it’s unclassy and cruel to break up with a romantic partner in a text message — or, worse, a tweet. (Well, we used to know that.) Yet requesting an unusual meeting at a sidewalk cafe might strike your partner as distressingly ominous.

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from CVR News Direct https://cvrnewsdirect.com/digital-privacy-at-stake-10-tips-to-avoid-leaving-tracks-around-internet/

[businessweekme]

The American Dream Leads to Canada

The American Dream leads to Canada: Why some of the most highly prized immigrant tech workers in the US are ditching their visas and moving north to Canada.

Vikram Rangnekar grew up in Mumbai, studied computer science at the University of Delaware, and by the waning days of the Obama administration had been working in Silicon Valley for almost six years. Through his job as a software engineer at LinkedIn Corp., Rangnekar secured an H-1B, the temporary visa for high-skilled workers, and the company began the process of sponsoring his green card way back in 2012. But he had dozens of senior colleagues from India who’d been waiting a decade or more for their green cards and still didn’t have them. “Some said it’d take 20 years for my turn,” Rangnekar remembers. “Others calculated 50 years—which is basically never.” As a young man with a global sensibility and an in-­demand set of skills, Rangnekar had no reason to let the uncertainty of a green card application define his family’s life. In the early fall of 2016, he, his wife, and their two young boys made the move north, to Canada.

Their first few months in Toronto were mostly spent settling in and scouting out decent tacos. Then Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Rangnekar’s inbox blew up with messages from friends and colleagues in the U.S. on H-1Bs asking for advice on how to migrate. Rather than deal with each one individually, he registered a website, MOVNorth.com—a reference to MOV, a classic coding command for copying data from one location to another—and wrote everything down there. He shared the URL on LinkedIn—of course—hoping it would help a few people. Sitting in a light-filled coffee shop in his hip Toronto neighbourhood less than a year later, Rangnekar pulls up the website on his MacBook. “That’s me,” he laughs, pointing to a selfie of him in a parka and wool beanie, both dusted with snow, smiling broadly and “freezing away.”

In its first two days online last July, MOVNorth.com got 20,000 views. He quickly set up a forum where people could ask and answer each other’s questions, and early last fall added a paywall to encourage people to commit to the community. Today, the site gets as many as 100,000 views per month—Rangnekar can track Trump’s rhetoric just by the spikes in traffic. Roughly 250 people pay $99 a year for access to the forum, almost all of whom are actively pursuing a move. He knows of at least a dozen other engineers who took his advice and have already arrived in Toronto.

Rangnekar still gets email queries daily, mostly from engineers with Indian surnames, all looking for the same information. Then there are the other emails, the ones Rangnekar calls “nastygrams.” He pulls up a sample with the subject line “Ignorant Idiot.” “You’re going to ruin your own country’s economy by making it harder for Canadians to find jobs, so for that reason we here in the US stopped foreign visas,” he reads. “We are becoming a proud independent nation again.”

There are anti-immigrant and so-called alt-right groups in Canada, but they haven’t gained the same traction as in the U.S. and Europe. The country has historically courted immigrants to propel economic growth. Now, at least 1 in 5 Canadian residents was born abroad; in Toronto, which has a thriving Indian community, more than half are foreign-born. “Canadians don’t send me any of this,” Rangnekar says, waving a hand at the screen.

Sometimes Canadians—always polite—write wondering whether an invasion of engineers will hurt the country. He writes back explaining what to him is an obvious, pragmatic reality­­: that tech is growing in its importance to culture and economies, and the benefits in terms of jobs and wealth are increasingly concentrated in global cities like Toronto. In short, as he sees it, the influx of migrants to Canada helps everyone.

The H-1B was created in 1990, part of an immigration overhaul signed into law by President George H.W. Bush that also created the EB-5 investor visa—the subject of a fracas involving Kushner Cos. seeking Chinese investment—and the diversity lottery, which Trump has attacked. Today, an estimated half a million H-1B holders live in the U.S. No one tracks exactly how many ditch their skilled visas for the permanent residency Canada offers, but during the first year of Trump’s presidency, the number of tech professionals globally who got permanent residency in Canada ticked up almost 40 percent from 2016, to more than 11,000.

Almost from the beginning, the H-1B system had obvious flaws. Outsourcing companies flood the application pool with jobs that barely qualify as high-skill, taking visas that could go to full-time employees at advanced technology companies. The cap on the number of H-1B visas fluctuates, but in the five-day annual application window in early April, about 190,000 people petitioned for just 85,000 spots—in Obama’s last year, 236,000 applied for the same number of visas. The lucky winners are chosen in a lottery. H-1Bs cost employers from $1,710 to $7,700, depending on factors such as their size and how much they depend on foreign staff. A chunk of those fees is earmarked for training U.S. workers in science and technology, but an analysis by the Brookings Institution found that, on balance, the money isn’t going to the areas with the highest demand for tech workers, i.e., where the greatest number of Americans could benefit.

Rangnekar received his H-1B in 2010, but his history with employment visas dates to 2005, when he graduated from the University of Delaware and wanted to start a company with two of his former classmates. The U.S. didn’t have an entrepreneur visa, so they moved to Singapore, returning four years later to present their product—Socialwok, a pre-Slack social platform for professional collaboration—to investors at the TechCrunch50 startup conference in San Francisco. They didn’t attract new cash, but all three walked away with the next best thing: a promising job offer.

Rangnekar had met his wife, Deepa Chaudhary, in Mumbai, and they married before moving to Singapore. Once they settled near San Jose, “I was seduced by the Californian lifestyle,” Rangnekar says. “The work environment, the free food, the state-of-the-art gym, a home in the Santa Cruz mountains.” Yet there were things preventing them from committing for the long haul. In Singapore, Chaudhary worked for Salesforce.com Inc.’s philanthropic foundation, but the spousal visa that comes with the H-1B, the H-4, at the time forbade her from holding a job. (Guidelines issued in early 2015 allowed certain H-4 holders to apply for work permits, but the Trump administration is reconsidering that policy.) Immigration law limits how many people from any given country can be granted green cards, and because Indians get about three-quarters of all H-1Bs, their backlog has grown. The couple began considering where they might go: to Singapore, to a European tech hub such as Berlin, or even to India. Then a friend of a friend mentioned Toronto.

In 1967, Canada became the first country to adopt a points-based immigration system. The country regularly tweaks how it rates applicants based on national goals and research into what makes for successful integration: A job offer used to come with 600 points, but now it’s worth just 200. Other factors like speaking fluent English or French—or, even better, both—have been given more weight over the years. Country of origin is irrelevant.

In 2016, Canada increased national immigration levels to 300,000 new permanent residents annually. Last year, in consultation with trade groups, it created a program called the Global Skills Strategy to issue temporary work permits to people with job offers in certain categories, including senior software engineers, in as little as two weeks. Since the program started in June, more than 5,600 people have been granted permits, from the U.S., India, Pakistan, Brazil, and elsewhere.

When he and Chaudhary decided to move, Rangnekar had an idea for a startup aimed at helping developers use advanced programming interfaces, or APIs, to build apps, but neither of them had a job offer. Still, for Canada at least, they were desirable applicants. Standing in the bright kitchen of their rented row house, their 3-year-old son slurping strawberry ice cream, they explain how simple it was to go online back in San Jose and, using a calculator provided by the Canadian government, determine with relative certainty that they would qualify for permanent residency. The hardest part about applying was taking a photo that met Canada’s specifications. “She sent them to me, and I was like, ‘This looks OK,’ ” Rangnekar says. Chaudhary cuts him off: “I was like, ‘No! It has to be centred like this!’ ” Once Trump was elected, Canadians would cautiously ask Rangnekar, “What do you think about him?” “I make it clear what side I’m on,” he says. Rangnekar watched as the travel ban triggered sweeping protests, legal challenges, and, among many in Trump’s base, red-blooded exultation. The nationalist wave hit home for many H-1B workers that February when a white man walked into a bar in Olathe, Kansas, shouted “Get out of my country!” and shot two Indian engineers.

Trump has since called for broad cuts to legal immigration and accused the H-1B system in particular of stealing jobs from American workers. He’s also advocated adopting a points-based system similar to Canada’s, but since Congress has to approve any changes to immigration law, it’s hard to see the U.S. replicating the flexibility of the Canadian system.

At first, after Rangnekar started MOV North, “People’s questions were like, ‘Tell us about Canada,’ ” he says. “That was really it.” They wanted to know the basics—jobs, schools, snow. Over time, as people began seriously considering a move, they asked detailed questions about the immigration process. “I was like one of them on the other side,” he says. Topics of interest now range from how to get fingerprinted for the FBI background check Canada requires to tips for getting letters from former employers detailing work experience.

Anand Iyer was living near San Jose when he stumbled on a post about MOV North that Rangnekar had put on the Q&A platform Quora. Iyer had an H-1B visa through his work for a cloud-services company and a house in Silicon Valley where he lived with his wife, but the uncertainty of waiting in the green card line was getting to him. “Friends in the same boat would constantly remind us that we might have to leave the country in weeks if our H-1B extension did not come through,” he says.

The couple eventually sold their home and moved to Mississauga, outside of Toronto, with their 2-year-old. Iyer still works remotely for the same company, but he took a pay cut to reflect the lower cost of living. Taxes are higher, but the government provides more, including health care and preschool. List prices for single-family homes in Iyer’s suburb and row houses in Rangnekar’s hipper neighbourhood have risen to around $900,000 (roughly C$1.1 million)—not cheap, but not Bay Area. All told, Iyer finds his quality of life has improved. “Silicon Valley is way more competitive,” he says. He’s remained active on the MOV North forums, answering questions rather than asking them. His responses have already persuaded some friends of his wife’s who were caught in green card paralysis to apply for passage into Canada.

In MOV North’s early days, Rangnekar tended to the site at night after working on his startup all day. But as the volume of questions coming in increased, so did the amount of time the site demanded. People would email to thank him—then ask for more help. “That motivated me because it tells you you’re kinda doing something right,” he says. “Very few people wrote to me about my APIs.” He began wondering if MOV North could became his primary business.

As recently as a few years ago, the kind of jobs that might interest a top engineer weren’t plentiful in Toronto, but that’s changing. Google, Uber, and Amazon are expanding their engineering outposts, and the Canadian government is pouring money into artificial intelligence research and facilities such as the MaRS Discovery District, a tech incubator whose startups have employed more than 6,000 people as of the end of 2016. There’s work to be found in other Canadian cities, too. Montreal is home to Google’s AI research lab, the e-commerce giant Shopify Inc. is based in Ottawa, and the social media manager Hootsuite Inc. is Vancouver’s hometown darling, though most people Rangnekar talks with are interested in Toronto.

For now, the differences between U.S. and Canadian immigration policies are creating major opportunities for Canadian entrepreneurs to lure workers who otherwise would have looked south. Bob Vaez was raised in Toronto, and in the 2000s, Vaez worked for Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia Corp. on a TN work permit, a provision under the North American Free Trade Agreement that makes it easy for Canadian professionals to work in the U.S. The TN, like the H-1B, is tied to employment, so when Vaez decided to start his own company, that was that. “To me it was, ‘This is the land of opportunity,’ ” he says. “And the next thing, I got a call from the company’s lawyers, like, ‘You know, you have to leave the U.S. in five days.’ ” He knew Canada could be more welcoming. Vaez’s engineer parents immigrated from Iran, but his aunts came over as refugees during the Cultural Revolution. “We’ve got the point system, but there is also a different situation when there is humanity at stake,” he says.

Vaez returned to Toronto and co-founded EventMobi, which builds apps for conventions and corporate training sessions. He hopes to take advantage of the uncertainty in the U.S., in part, by working with MOV North on a new hiring platform Rangnekar is building. Once it’s up and running, companies will be able to search for applicants, which his algorithm ranks based on their relevant skills and experience. “I’m a software guy. I just look for any excuse to automate something,” Rangnekar says. He knows the business well—after all, he spent years at LinkedIn. One advantage he has over traditional recruiters, as he sees it, is that people who sign up for his site have already expressed interest in Canada. So far thousands of people have registered, all saying they want to move. <BW>

The post The American Dream Leads to Canada appeared first on Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East.

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[fadingfartconnoisseur]

The Secret Sauce Behind Scott’s Cheap Flights

“Have you heard of Scott’s Cheap Flights? Should I use them?”

When friends and family far removed from the travel hacking/cheap flights space ask me about a website, I know its mainstream. While there are many good deal websites out there (The Flight Deal, Secret Flying, and Holiday Pirates are three of my favorites), Scott’s Cheap Flights seems to have broken through where others have not. Over 1 million people get his daily flight deals email. I’m a big fan of the website and their ability to often break airfare deals (I used one of their alerts to fly to South Africa). It turns out Scott is a fan of my website too so we sat down for an interview where I got him to spill the secret behind his website:

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone about yourself. How did you get into this? Scott: When I graduated college in 2009, I knew two things: (1) I wanted to travel the world and (2) I was never going to be wealthy. So if I wasn’t going to let #2 prevent #1, I knew I would have to figure out some creative ways to travel without spending my life savings. I began reading up on flight pricing economics, spending hours on various flight search engines, and learning various airfare patterns. Before long, I found an online community of fellow travel hackers and cheap-flight aficionados who enjoy not just travel but also the thrill of getting a great deal on flights.

Where did the idea of this website come from? Scott’s Cheap Flights has a weird origin story. In 2013, I got the best deal of my life: nonstop from NYC to Milan for $130 round-trip. Milan hadn’t even been on my radar as a place to visit, but for $130 round-trip, there’s no way I wouldn’t go. And it turned out to be amazing! I went skiing in the Alps, caught an AC Milan match, hiked Cinque Terre, hung out on Lake Como. It was divine.

When I got back, word spread among friends and coworkers about the deal I got, and dozens of them began asking me to let them know next time I found a fare like that so they could get in on it, too. So rather than try to remember to tell George and Esther and Aviva when a great deal popped up, I decided to start a simple little email list instead so I could alert everyone at once. Scott’s Cheap Flights was born.

For the first 18 months, though, it was just a little, fun hobby I did for my friends. It wasn’t until August 2015 that it had generated enough organic growth that it made sense to think about turning it into a business.

You’ve sort of blown up in the last year or so. What do you think have been the two biggest factors into your success? First off, thanks! We just hit one million subscribers — still hard for me to believe. The credit goes to two primary factors:

First, there’s an incredible team who runs Scott’s Cheap Flights. It’s not just me; we’re up to 25 folks on the team now. We have a team of flight searchers finding great deals around the world, and also a team of amazing customer support folks. On an average day we get well over 700 emails in our inbox, and most people get a response within a few hours, if not a few minutes. I think this is a major reason why more than 50% of people who sign up for Scott’s Cheap Flights found out about it via word of mouth.

Second, the startup itself had very serendipitous timing. Right around when Scott’s Cheap Flights became a business, international flight prices began to plummet, fueled by low oil prices and a bevy of new low-cost airlines like Norwegian and WOW jumping into the transatlantic market. Whereas in 2010 it was rare to see flights from the US to Europe under $900 round-trip, in 2015 (and through to today), it’s relatively common to see those same flights around $400 round-trip, if not less. We can’t force airlines to offer cheap flights, but we’ve been there to ride the wave these past few years and help subscribers pay half of what they used to to travel abroad.

Were there any media hits or high-profile features that really changed your trajectory? I remember hearing about you a few years ago, but now it seems everyone I know, even outside of travel, has heard of your newsletter. There was one in particular: a Business Insider article and I were taking in the summer of 2015. It helped take Scott’s Cheap Flights from a hobby to a full-fledged business by bringing in thousands of new subscribers. We’ve had hundreds of media hits in the two years since then, but as we’ve grown, each individual one has necessarily had a diminishing impact. Perhaps a Nomadic Matt interview will give a big new boost though!

How does your website work? How do you find these deals? Do you have team of people searching for deals? Is it an algorithm? One thing that surprises a lot of people is that we don’t have a bunch of computers running secret algorithms to find cheap flights. All of our fares are searched by hand. The secret sauce is hard work. Airfare changes by the hour, if not by the minute, and the best deals don’t tend to last very long, so finding out about them early is the key to booking them before they’re gone. Most people don’t want to spend all their free time searching for cheap flights; we love doing it and being subscribers’ early detection radar.

Another way to think of it is like this: Almost everybody is capable of cooking dinner at home, but that doesn’t prevent the existence of the restaurant industry. People don’t always want to put in the time and effort required to find cheap flights, so we’re happy to do it for them.

That seems super time-consuming. How do you decide what and where to search? Do you just randomly plugging in places and dates, or is there more of a method to the madness? There’s a bit of proprietary knowledge that goes into the process, but 95% of it is just the sheer legwork, day after day, searching various routes and seeing what pops up. There’s more of a skill aspect to the process than I would’ve guessed four years ago, whether that’s remembering certain esoteric routes that periodically go on sale, or knowing that a fare war out of one city likely indicates fare drops in other similar cities. For the most part, though, it’s just a small team of incredibly talented and dedicated flight searchers scouring through fares all day every day, disregarding 99% of them and skimming off the juiciest 1% to send to subscribers.

What are some of the biggest trends in flights you are seeing right now? In the last year or two we’ve seen far cheaper flights than in the past to India (before: $1,000+, now: ~$600), Italy and the Netherlands (before: $900, now: ~$350), and Hawaii (before: $800, now $350 from the West Coast, $550 from further east).

Unfortunately (though perhaps not surprisingly), we’re seeing a continued drought of cheap flights to popular destinations like Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition, we’re seeing a continued unbundling of airfare: more low-cost carriers and “budget economy” fares offered by full-service carriers that don’t include checked bags, seat selection, or meals.

Do you use your own deals or are you more of a points/miles-in-business-class kind of guy? Sure do! I’m personally not a business-class type of guy. I’m still young enough to be fine in coach for as long and far as a plane can fly. Ask me again in 20 years — but in general I’m uncomfortable being doted on in the premium section of the plane. I’m a simple guy. I don’t need much.

Will we see more business-class deals? Don’t wanna overpromise and underdeliver. Stay tuned!

Do you plan to go global and feature more non-US deals? Yes! We have a team of flight searchers finding cheap fares departing not just from the US but also Canada, the UK and mainland Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East (Sub-Saharan Africa coming soon!).

You get all these flight deals, but tell me some of your favorite travel experiences. What’s one of your favorite recent travel memories? Last year my wife and I took a trip to Belarus to visit her family. One of the days we took a trip to a “park” that consisted of a big open field filled with old discarded and retired Cold War–era Soviet weapons. Think machine guns, missiles, and tanks.

Mostly people would walk around and pose for selfies in front of these massive weapons, but at one point I saw a small group of tourists from Asia hand a park operator some cash and then start to climb on top of a WWII-era tank. I thought they were just going to take photos, but a few seconds later the tank started lurching forward before hitting a cool 25 miles per hour, zipping around the park. These tourists were having the time of their effing lives, and it gave me so much joy just to watch them.

Your deal website is great of course, but what about just everyday flights people need to see Grandma. What advice do you have based on your experience learning how airline pricing works? The single best trick to getting cheap airfare is flexibility. Being flexible not just with your dates but also your locations. For example, that NYC-Milan nonstop round-trip deal for $130 I mentioned at the top. I wasn’t living in NYC; I was living in DC. But for that fare it was well worth the short $20 bus ride up. I spent the weekend with friends in NYC and saved myself $650 off what fares would’ve been from DC to Milan.

The way most people approach getting a flight is this: (1) pick where they want to go; (2) pick their dates; and (3) see what prices are available. By prioritizing the fare lowest, they often end up with expensive tickets.

Instead, if getting a cheap flight is your priority, flip the order: (1) see what prices are available to various places are around the world; (2) decide which of the cheap destinations appeal to you; and (3) select the dates you like that have the cheap fares available.

What’s the craziest deal you ever got? In addition to that $130 nonstop NYC-Milan deal, my wife and I recently scored $169 round-trip flights to Japan — flippin’ love mistake fares. And team members have gotten similarly good deals to Hawaii, New Zealand, etc.

Finally, what’s one non-airfare-related travel piece of advice you’d give someone? Read more magazine articles and listen to more smart, informative podcasts. I’m a firm believer in the liberal arts approach of knowing a bit about everything (as opposed to everything about just one subject), not only as a way to be a well-rounded person but also as a social lubricant. If you can hold a conversation about anything from architecture to the stock market to Asian budget airlines, you’re far more likely to meet interesting people and develop deeper relationships.

Scott founded Scott’s Cheap Flights in a Denver coffeeshop. Scott is the flight searcher-in-chief, spending 8-12 hours a day on Google Flights as well as oversee daily operations. If you’re looking for flight deals, it’s one of the best.

The post The Secret Sauce Behind Scott’s Cheap Flights appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

via Travel Blogs http://ift.tt/2kmwvIQ

[touristguidebuzz]

The Secret Sauce Behind Scott’s Cheap Flights

“Have you heard of Scott’s Cheap Flights? Should I use them?”

When friends and family far removed from the travel hacking/cheap flights space ask me about a website, I know its mainstream. While there are many good deal websites out there (The Flight Deal, Secret Flying, and Holiday Pirates are three of my favorites), Scott’s Cheap Flights seems to have broken through where others have not. Over 1 million people get his daily flight deals email. I’m a big fan of the website and their ability to often break airfare deals (I used one of their alerts to fly to South Africa). It turns out Scott is a fan of my website too so we sat down for an interview where I got him to spill the secret behind his website:

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone about yourself. How did you get into this? Scott: When I graduated college in 2009, I knew two things: (1) I wanted to travel the world and (2) I was never going to be wealthy. So if I wasn’t going to let #2 prevent #1, I knew I would have to figure out some creative ways to travel without spending my life savings. I began reading up on flight pricing economics, spending hours on various flight search engines, and learning various airfare patterns. Before long, I found an online community of fellow travel hackers and cheap-flight aficionados who enjoy not just travel but also the thrill of getting a great deal on flights.

Where did the idea of this website come from? Scott’s Cheap Flights has a weird origin story. In 2013, I got the best deal of my life: nonstop from NYC to Milan for $130 round-trip. Milan hadn’t even been on my radar as a place to visit, but for $130 round-trip, there’s no way I wouldn’t go. And it turned out to be amazing! I went skiing in the Alps, caught an AC Milan match, hiked Cinque Terre, hung out on Lake Como. It was divine.

When I got back, word spread among friends and coworkers about the deal I got, and dozens of them began asking me to let them know next time I found a fare like that so they could get in on it, too. So rather than try to remember to tell George and Esther and Aviva when a great deal popped up, I decided to start a simple little email list instead so I could alert everyone at once. Scott’s Cheap Flights was born.

For the first 18 months, though, it was just a little, fun hobby I did for my friends. It wasn’t until August 2015 that it had generated enough organic growth that it made sense to think about turning it into a business.

You’ve sort of blown up in the last year or so. What do you think have been the two biggest factors into your success? First off, thanks! We just hit one million subscribers — still hard for me to believe. The credit goes to two primary factors:

First, there’s an incredible team who runs Scott’s Cheap Flights. It’s not just me; we’re up to 25 folks on the team now. We have a team of flight searchers finding great deals around the world, and also a team of amazing customer support folks. On an average day we get well over 700 emails in our inbox, and most people get a response within a few hours, if not a few minutes. I think this is a major reason why more than 50% of people who sign up for Scott’s Cheap Flights found out about it via word of mouth.

Second, the startup itself had very serendipitous timing. Right around when Scott’s Cheap Flights became a business, international flight prices began to plummet, fueled by low oil prices and a bevy of new low-cost airlines like Norwegian and WOW jumping into the transatlantic market. Whereas in 2010 it was rare to see flights from the US to Europe under $900 round-trip, in 2015 (and through to today), it’s relatively common to see those same flights around $400 round-trip, if not less. We can’t force airlines to offer cheap flights, but we’ve been there to ride the wave these past few years and help subscribers pay half of what they used to to travel abroad.

Were there any media hits or high-profile features that really changed your trajectory? I remember hearing about you a few years ago, but now it seems everyone I know, even outside of travel, has heard of your newsletter. There was one in particular: a Business Insider article and I were taking in the summer of 2015. It helped take Scott’s Cheap Flights from a hobby to a full-fledged business by bringing in thousands of new subscribers. We’ve had hundreds of media hits in the two years since then, but as we’ve grown, each individual one has necessarily had a diminishing impact. Perhaps a Nomadic Matt interview will give a big new boost though!

How does your website work? How do you find these deals? Do you have team of people searching for deals? Is it an algorithm? One thing that surprises a lot of people is that we don’t have a bunch of computers running secret algorithms to find cheap flights. All of our fares are searched by hand. The secret sauce is hard work. Airfare changes by the hour, if not by the minute, and the best deals don’t tend to last very long, so finding out about them early is the key to booking them before they’re gone. Most people don’t want to spend all their free time searching for cheap flights; we love doing it and being subscribers’ early detection radar.

Another way to think of it is like this: Almost everybody is capable of cooking dinner at home, but that doesn’t prevent the existence of the restaurant industry. People don’t always want to put in the time and effort required to find cheap flights, so we’re happy to do it for them.

That seems super time-consuming. How do you decide what and where to search? Do you just randomly plugging in places and dates, or is there more of a method to the madness? There’s a bit of proprietary knowledge that goes into the process, but 95% of it is just the sheer legwork, day after day, searching various routes and seeing what pops up. There’s more of a skill aspect to the process than I would’ve guessed four years ago, whether that’s remembering certain esoteric routes that periodically go on sale, or knowing that a fare war out of one city likely indicates fare drops in other similar cities. For the most part, though, it’s just a small team of incredibly talented and dedicated flight searchers scouring through fares all day every day, disregarding 99% of them and skimming off the juiciest 1% to send to subscribers.

What are some of the biggest trends in flights you are seeing right now? In the last year or two we’ve seen far cheaper flights than in the past to India (before: $1,000+, now: ~$600), Italy and the Netherlands (before: $900, now: ~$350), and Hawaii (before: $800, now $350 from the West Coast, $550 from further east).

Unfortunately (though perhaps not surprisingly), we’re seeing a continued drought of cheap flights to popular destinations like Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition, we’re seeing a continued unbundling of airfare: more low-cost carriers and “budget economy” fares offered by full-service carriers that don’t include checked bags, seat selection, or meals.

Do you use your own deals or are you more of a points/miles-in-business-class kind of guy? Sure do! I’m personally not a business-class type of guy. I’m still young enough to be fine in coach for as long and far as a plane can fly. Ask me again in 20 years — but in general I’m uncomfortable being doted on in the premium section of the plane. I’m a simple guy. I don’t need much.

Will we see more business-class deals? Don’t wanna overpromise and underdeliver. Stay tuned!

Do you plan to go global and feature more non-US deals? Yes! We have a team of flight searchers finding cheap fares departing not just from the US but also Canada, the UK and mainland Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East (Sub-Saharan Africa coming soon!).

You get all these flight deals, but tell me some of your favorite travel experiences. What’s one of your favorite recent travel memories? Last year my wife and I took a trip to Belarus to visit her family. One of the days we took a trip to a “park” that consisted of a big open field filled with old discarded and retired Cold War–era Soviet weapons. Think machine guns, missiles, and tanks.

Mostly people would walk around and pose for selfies in front of these massive weapons, but at one point I saw a small group of tourists from Asia hand a park operator some cash and then start to climb on top of a WWII-era tank. I thought they were just going to take photos, but a few seconds later the tank started lurching forward before hitting a cool 25 miles per hour, zipping around the park. These tourists were having the time of their effing lives, and it gave me so much joy just to watch them.

Your deal website is great of course, but what about just everyday flights people need to see Grandma. What advice do you have based on your experience learning how airline pricing works? The single best trick to getting cheap airfare is flexibility. Being flexible not just with your dates but also your locations. For example, that NYC-Milan nonstop round-trip deal for $130 I mentioned at the top. I wasn’t living in NYC; I was living in DC. But for that fare it was well worth the short $20 bus ride up. I spent the weekend with friends in NYC and saved myself $650 off what fares would’ve been from DC to Milan.

The way most people approach getting a flight is this: (1) pick where they want to go; (2) pick their dates; and (3) see what prices are available. By prioritizing the fare lowest, they often end up with expensive tickets.

Instead, if getting a cheap flight is your priority, flip the order: (1) see what prices are available to various places are around the world; (2) decide which of the cheap destinations appeal to you; and (3) select the dates you like that have the cheap fares available.

What’s the craziest deal you ever got? In addition to that $130 nonstop NYC-Milan deal, my wife and I recently scored $169 round-trip flights to Japan — flippin’ love mistake fares. And team members have gotten similarly good deals to Hawaii, New Zealand, etc.

Finally, what’s one non-airfare-related travel piece of advice you’d give someone? Read more magazine articles and listen to more smart, informative podcasts. I’m a firm believer in the liberal arts approach of knowing a bit about everything (as opposed to everything about just one subject), not only as a way to be a well-rounded person but also as a social lubricant. If you can hold a conversation about anything from architecture to the stock market to Asian budget airlines, you’re far more likely to meet interesting people and develop deeper relationships.

Scott founded Scott’s Cheap Flights in a Denver coffeeshop. Scott is the flight searcher-in-chief, spending 8-12 hours a day on Google Flights as well as oversee daily operations. If you’re looking for flight deals, it’s one of the best.

The post The Secret Sauce Behind Scott’s Cheap Flights appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

[theladyjstyle]

“Have you heard of Scott’s Cheap Flights? Should I use them?”

When friends and family far removed from the travel hacking/cheap flights space ask me about a website, I know its mainstream. While there are many good deal websites out there (The Flight Deal, Secret Flying, and Holiday Pirates are three of my favorites), Scott’s Cheap Flights seems to have broken through where others have not. Over 1 million people get this daily flight deals email. I’m a big fan of the website and their ability to often break airfare deals (I used one of their alerts to fly to South Africa). It turns out Scott is fan of my website too so we sat down for an interview where I get him to spill the secret behind his website:

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone about yourself. How did you get into this? Scott: When I graduated college in 2009, I knew two things: (1) I wanted to travel the world and (2) I was never going to be wealthy. So if I wasn’t going to let #2 prevent #1, I knew I would have to figure out some creative ways to travel without spending my life savings. I began reading up on flight pricing economics, spending hours on various flight search engines, and learning various airfare patterns. Before long, I found an online community of fellow travel hackers and cheap-flight aficionados who enjoy not just travel but also the thrill of getting a great deal on flights.

Where did the idea of this website come from? Scott’s Cheap Flights has a weird origin story. In 2013, I got the best deal of my life: nonstop from NYC to Milan for $130 round-trip. Milan hadn’t even been on my radar as a place to visit, but for $130 round-trip, there’s no way I wouldn’t go. And it turned out to be amazing! I went skiing in the Alps, caught an AC Milan match, hiked Cinque Terre, hung out on Lake Como. It was divine.

When I got back, word spread among friends and coworkers about the deal I got, and dozens of them began asking me to let them know next time I found a fare like that so they could get in on it, too. So rather than try to remember to tell George and Esther and Aviva when a great deal popped up, I decided to start a simple little email list instead so I could alert everyone at once. Scott’s Cheap Flights was born.

For the first 18 months, though, it was just a little, fun hobby I did for my friends. It wasn’t until August 2015 that it had generated enough organic growth that it made sense to think about turning it into a business.

You’ve sort of blown up in the last year or so. What do you think have been the two biggest factors into your success? First off, thanks! We just hit one million subscribers — still hard for me to believe. The credit goes to two primary factors:

First, there’s an incredible team who runs Scott’s Cheap Flights. It’s not just me; we’re up to 25 folks on the team now. We have a team of flight searchers finding great deals around the world, and also a team of amazing customer support folks. On an average day we get well over 700 emails in our inbox, and most people get a response within a few hours, if not a few minutes. I think this is a major reason why more than 50% of people who sign up for Scott’s Cheap Flights found out about it via word of mouth.

Second, the startup itself had very serendipitous timing. Right around when Scott’s Cheap Flights became a business, international flight prices began to plummet, fueled by low oil prices and a bevy of new low-cost airlines like Norwegian and WOW jumping into the transatlantic market. Whereas in 2010 it was rare to see flights from the US to Europe under $900 round-trip, in 2015 (and through to today), it’s relatively common to see those same flights around $400 round-trip, if not less. We can’t force airlines to offer cheap flights, but we’ve been there to ride the wave these past few years and help subscribers pay half of what they used to to travel abroad.

Were there any media hits or high-profile features that really changed your trajectory? I remember hearing about you a few years ago, but now it seems everyone I know, even outside of travel, has heard of your newsletter. There was one in particular: a Business Insider article and I were taking in the summer of 2015. It helped take Scott’s Cheap Flights from a hobby to a full-fledged business by bringing in thousands of new subscribers. We’ve had hundreds of media hits in the two years since then, but as we’ve grown, each individual one has necessarily had a diminishing impact. Perhaps a Nomadic Matt interview will give a big new boost though!

How does your website work? How do you find these deals? Do you have team of people searching for deals? Is it an algorithm? One thing that surprises a lot of people is that we don’t have a bunch of computers running secret algorithms to find cheap flights. All of our fares are searched by hand. The secret sauce is hard work. Airfare changes by the hour, if not by the minute, and the best deals don’t tend to last very long, so finding out about them early is the key to booking them before they’re gone. Most people don’t want to spend all their free time searching for cheap flights; we love doing it and being subscribers’ early detection radar.

Another way to think of it is like this: Almost everybody is capable of cooking dinner at home, but that doesn’t prevent the existence of the restaurant industry. People don’t always want to put in the time and effort required to find cheap flights, so we’re happy to do it for them.

That seems super time-consuming. How do you decide what and where to search? Do you just randomly plugging in places and dates, or is there more of a method to the madness? There’s a bit of proprietary knowledge that goes into the process, but 95% of it is just the sheer legwork, day after day, searching various routes and seeing what pops up. There’s more of a skill aspect to the process than I would’ve guessed four years ago, whether that’s remembering certain esoteric routes that periodically go on sale, or knowing that a fare war out of one city likely indicates fare drops in other similar cities. For the most part, though, it’s just a small team of incredibly talented and dedicated flight searchers scouring through fares all day every day, disregarding 99% of them and skimming off the juiciest 1% to send to subscribers.

What are some of the biggest trends in flights you are seeing right now? In the last year or two we’ve seen far cheaper flights than in the past to India (before: $1,000+, now: ~$600), Italy and the Netherlands (before: $900, now: ~$350), and Hawaii (before: $800, now $350 from the West Coast, $550 from further east).

Unfortunately (though perhaps not surprisingly), we’re seeing a continued drought of cheap flights to popular destinations like Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition, we’re seeing a continued unbundling of airfare: more low-cost carriers and “budget economy” fares offered by full-service carriers that don’t include checked bags, seat selection, or meals.

Do you use your own deals or are you more of a points/miles-in-business-class kind of guy? Sure do! I’m personally not a business-class type of guy. I’m still young enough to be fine in coach for as long and far as a plane can fly. Ask me again in 20 years — but in general I’m uncomfortable being doted on in the premium section of the plane. I’m a simple guy. I don’t need much.

Will we see more business-class deals? Don’t wanna overpromise and underdeliver. Stay tuned!

Do you plan to go global and feature more non-US deals? Yes! We have a team of flight searchers finding cheap fares departing not just from the US but also Canada, the UK and mainland Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East (Sub-Saharan Africa coming soon!).

You get all these flight deals, but tell me some of your favorite travel experiences. What’s one of your favorite recent travel memories? Last year my wife and I took a trip to Belarus to visit her family. One of the days we took a trip to a “park” that consisted of a big open field filled with old discarded and retired Cold War–era Soviet weapons. Think machine guns, missiles, and tanks.

Mostly people would walk around and pose for selfies in front of these massive weapons, but at one point I saw a small group of tourists from Asia hand a park operator some cash and then start to climb on top of a WWII-era tank. I thought they were just going to take photos, but a few seconds later the tank started lurching forward before hitting a cool 25 miles per hour, zipping around the park. These tourists were having the time of their effing lives, and it gave me so much joy just to watch them.

Your deal website is great of course, but what about just everyday flights people need to see Grandma. What advice do you have based on your experience learning how airline pricing works? The single best trick to getting cheap airfare is flexibility. Being flexible not just with your dates but also your locations. For example, that NYC-Milan nonstop round-trip deal for $130 I mentioned at the top. I wasn’t living in NYC; I was living in DC. But for that fare it was well worth the short $20 bus ride up. I spent the weekend with friends in NYC and saved myself $650 off what fares would’ve been from DC to Milan.

The way most people approach getting a flight is this: (1) pick where they want to go; (2) pick their dates; and (3) see what prices are available. By prioritizing the fare lowest, they often end up with expensive tickets.

Instead, if getting a cheap flight is your priority, flip the order: (1) see what prices are available to various places are around the world; (2) decide which of the cheap destinations appeal to you; and (3) select the dates you like that have the cheap fares available.

What’s the craziest deal you ever got? In addition to that $130 nonstop NYC-Milan deal, my wife and I recently scored $169 round-trip flights to Japan — flippin’ love mistake fares. And team members have gotten similarly good deals to Hawaii, New Zealand, etc.

Finally, what’s one non-airfare-related travel piece of advice you’d give someone? Read more magazine articles and listen to more smart, informative podcasts. I’m a firm believer in the liberal arts approach of knowing a bit about everything (as opposed to everything about just one subject), not only as a way to be a well-rounded person but also as a social lubricant. If you can hold a conversation about anything from architecture to the stock market to Asian budget airlines, you’re far more likely to meet interesting people and develop deeper relationships.

Scott founded Scott’s Cheap Flights in a Denver coffeeshop. Scott is the flight searcher-in-chief, spending 8-12 hours a day on Google Flights as well as oversee daily operations. If you’re looking for flight deals, it’s one of the best.

The post The Secret Sauce Behind Scott’s Cheap Flights appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

The Secret Sauce Behind Scott’s Cheap Flights http://ift.tt/2kmwvIQ

[tamboradventure]

The Secret Sauce Behind Scott’s Cheap Flights

“Have you heard of Scott’s Cheap Flights? Should I use them?”

When friends and family far removed from the travel hacking/cheap flights space ask me about a website, I know its mainstream. While there are many good deal websites out there (The Flight Deal, Secret Flying, and Holiday Pirates are three of my favorites), Scott’s Cheap Flights seems to have broken through where others have not. Over 1 million people get this daily flight deals email. I’m a big fan of the website and their ability to often break airfare deals (I used one of their alerts to fly to South Africa). It turns out Scott is fan of my website too so we sat down for an interview where I get him to spill the secret behind his website:

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone about yourself. How did you get into this? Scott: When I graduated college in 2009, I knew two things: (1) I wanted to travel the world and (2) I was never going to be wealthy. So if I wasn’t going to let #2 prevent #1, I knew I would have to figure out some creative ways to travel without spending my life savings. I began reading up on flight pricing economics, spending hours on various flight search engines, and learning various airfare patterns. Before long, I found an online community of fellow travel hackers and cheap-flight aficionados who enjoy not just travel but also the thrill of getting a great deal on flights.

Where did the idea of this website come from? Scott’s Cheap Flights has a weird origin story. In 2013, I got the best deal of my life: nonstop from NYC to Milan for $130 round-trip. Milan hadn’t even been on my radar as a place to visit, but for $130 round-trip, there’s no way I wouldn’t go. And it turned out to be amazing! I went skiing in the Alps, caught an AC Milan match, hiked Cinque Terre, hung out on Lake Como. It was divine.

When I got back, word spread among friends and coworkers about the deal I got, and dozens of them began asking me to let them know next time I found a fare like that so they could get in on it, too. So rather than try to remember to tell George and Esther and Aviva when a great deal popped up, I decided to start a simple little email list instead so I could alert everyone at once. Scott’s Cheap Flights was born.

For the first 18 months, though, it was just a little, fun hobby I did for my friends. It wasn’t until August 2015 that it had generated enough organic growth that it made sense to think about turning it into a business.

You’ve sort of blown up in the last year or so. What do you think have been the two biggest factors into your success? First off, thanks! We just hit one million subscribers — still hard for me to believe. The credit goes to two primary factors:

First, there’s an incredible team who runs Scott’s Cheap Flights. It’s not just me; we’re up to 25 folks on the team now. We have a team of flight searchers finding great deals around the world, and also a team of amazing customer support folks. On an average day we get well over 700 emails in our inbox, and most people get a response within a few hours, if not a few minutes. I think this is a major reason why more than 50% of people who sign up for Scott’s Cheap Flights found out about it via word of mouth.

Second, the startup itself had very serendipitous timing. Right around when Scott’s Cheap Flights became a business, international flight prices began to plummet, fueled by low oil prices and a bevy of new low-cost airlines like Norwegian and WOW jumping into the transatlantic market. Whereas in 2010 it was rare to see flights from the US to Europe under $900 round-trip, in 2015 (and through to today), it’s relatively common to see those same flights around $400 round-trip, if not less. We can’t force airlines to offer cheap flights, but we’ve been there to ride the wave these past few years and help subscribers pay half of what they used to to travel abroad.

Were there any media hits or high-profile features that really changed your trajectory? I remember hearing about you a few years ago, but now it seems everyone I know, even outside of travel, has heard of your newsletter. There was one in particular: a Business Insider article and I were taking in the summer of 2015. It helped take Scott’s Cheap Flights from a hobby to a full-fledged business by bringing in thousands of new subscribers. We’ve had hundreds of media hits in the two years since then, but as we’ve grown, each individual one has necessarily had a diminishing impact. Perhaps a Nomadic Matt interview will give a big new boost though!

How does your website work? How do you find these deals? Do you have team of people searching for deals? Is it an algorithm? One thing that surprises a lot of people is that we don’t have a bunch of computers running secret algorithms to find cheap flights. All of our fares are searched by hand. The secret sauce is hard work. Airfare changes by the hour, if not by the minute, and the best deals don’t tend to last very long, so finding out about them early is the key to booking them before they’re gone. Most people don’t want to spend all their free time searching for cheap flights; we love doing it and being subscribers’ early detection radar.

Another way to think of it is like this: Almost everybody is capable of cooking dinner at home, but that doesn’t prevent the existence of the restaurant industry. People don’t always want to put in the time and effort required to find cheap flights, so we’re happy to do it for them.

That seems super time-consuming. How do you decide what and where to search? Do you just randomly plugging in places and dates, or is there more of a method to the madness? There’s a bit of proprietary knowledge that goes into the process, but 95% of it is just the sheer legwork, day after day, searching various routes and seeing what pops up. There’s more of a skill aspect to the process than I would’ve guessed four years ago, whether that’s remembering certain esoteric routes that periodically go on sale, or knowing that a fare war out of one city likely indicates fare drops in other similar cities. For the most part, though, it’s just a small team of incredibly talented and dedicated flight searchers scouring through fares all day every day, disregarding 99% of them and skimming off the juiciest 1% to send to subscribers.

What are some of the biggest trends in flights you are seeing right now? In the last year or two we’ve seen far cheaper flights than in the past to India (before: $1,000+, now: ~$600), Italy and the Netherlands (before: $900, now: ~$350), and Hawaii (before: $800, now $350 from the West Coast, $550 from further east).

Unfortunately (though perhaps not surprisingly), we’re seeing a continued drought of cheap flights to popular destinations like Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition, we’re seeing a continued unbundling of airfare: more low-cost carriers and “budget economy” fares offered by full-service carriers that don’t include checked bags, seat selection, or meals.

Do you use your own deals or are you more of a points/miles-in-business-class kind of guy? Sure do! I’m personally not a business-class type of guy. I’m still young enough to be fine in coach for as long and far as a plane can fly. Ask me again in 20 years — but in general I’m uncomfortable being doted on in the premium section of the plane. I’m a simple guy. I don’t need much.

Will we see more business-class deals? Don’t wanna overpromise and underdeliver. Stay tuned!

Do you plan to go global and feature more non-US deals? Yes! We have a team of flight searchers finding cheap fares departing not just from the US but also Canada, the UK and mainland Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East (Sub-Saharan Africa coming soon!).

You get all these flight deals, but tell me some of your favorite travel experiences. What’s one of your favorite recent travel memories? Last year my wife and I took a trip to Belarus to visit her family. One of the days we took a trip to a “park” that consisted of a big open field filled with old discarded and retired Cold War–era Soviet weapons. Think machine guns, missiles, and tanks.

Mostly people would walk around and pose for selfies in front of these massive weapons, but at one point I saw a small group of tourists from Asia hand a park operator some cash and then start to climb on top of a WWII-era tank. I thought they were just going to take photos, but a few seconds later the tank started lurching forward before hitting a cool 25 miles per hour, zipping around the park. These tourists were having the time of their effing lives, and it gave me so much joy just to watch them.

Your deal website is great of course, but what about just everyday flights people need to see Grandma. What advice do you have based on your experience learning how airline pricing works? The single best trick to getting cheap airfare is flexibility. Being flexible not just with your dates but also your locations. For example, that NYC-Milan nonstop round-trip deal for $130 I mentioned at the top. I wasn’t living in NYC; I was living in DC. But for that fare it was well worth the short $20 bus ride up. I spent the weekend with friends in NYC and saved myself $650 off what fares would’ve been from DC to Milan.

The way most people approach getting a flight is this: (1) pick where they want to go; (2) pick their dates; and (3) see what prices are available. By prioritizing the fare lowest, they often end up with expensive tickets.

Instead, if getting a cheap flight is your priority, flip the order: (1) see what prices are available to various places are around the world; (2) decide which of the cheap destinations appeal to you; and (3) select the dates you like that have the cheap fares available.

What’s the craziest deal you ever got? In addition to that $130 nonstop NYC-Milan deal, my wife and I recently scored $169 round-trip flights to Japan — flippin’ love mistake fares. And team members have gotten similarly good deals to Hawaii, New Zealand, etc.

Finally, what’s one non-airfare-related travel piece of advice you’d give someone? Read more magazine articles and listen to more smart, informative podcasts. I’m a firm believer in the liberal arts approach of knowing a bit about everything (as opposed to everything about just one subject), not only as a way to be a well-rounded person but also as a social lubricant. If you can hold a conversation about anything from architecture to the stock market to Asian budget airlines, you’re far more likely to meet interesting people and develop deeper relationships.

Scott founded Scott’s Cheap Flights in a Denver coffeeshop. Scott is the flight searcher-in-chief, spending 8-12 hours a day on Google Flights as well as oversee daily operations. If you’re looking for flight deals, it’s one of the best.

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