All Expense Paid Giveaway For Chicago Seminars In October

It is hard to believe it has been just 3 short months (and 4 days) since I got back on the travel blogging wagon and started Frequent Flyer University!

In that short time, FFU has gone from 0 readers to over 2,500 readers a day!

This has been in no short order to all the wonderful readers who have discovered FFU, earned some free miles, and then told their friends about the blog!

So thank you to all the amazing readers of FFU! I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog as much as I have had putting it together!

Chicago Seminars

Earlier this week, I was looking over the Chicago Frequent Flyer Seminars which will be held October 12-14, 2012.

More information on the event can be found here and here

I personally have never been but Randy Petersen was generous enough to take me along on the Star MegaDO 3 last year and that was one of the coolest experiences of my life!

On the SMD3, I also got to meet a ton of other frequent flying bloggers like The Points Guy, View From The Wing, Mommy Points, Million Mile Secrets, etc (still haven’t met the elusive Lucky) and it has been neat stalking watching them all on Facebook as they traverse the globe.

Therefore I will be attending the Chicago Seminars and am looking forward to seeing everyone from the SMD3, meeting many new friends & hopefully some readers, and learning some new travel hacking tips along the way.

The Giveaway

As most of you know, I do get a small commission on some of the products I talk about on the blog.

My posts always first revolve around stuff I actually want to write about and then if there happens to be a link I can use, I will throw it in.

For most bloggers, including myself, even if we weren’t making a few bucks off the blog, we would still be blogging because we love to help other people travel and explore the world for free. And to be honest, back when I use to write my other blog in 2009, Ahlay Travel, I actually had no idea that you could even make money from blogging so I did it out of my love of helping my friends travel for free.

That being said, since the Chicago Seminars are in my backyard and I can get to the venue for all of $2.50 on the CTA and don’t need to stay in a hotel, my only expenses are the small entry fee.

I know there are tons of readers out there that would love to go but it may be out of their budget or they are just on the fence because they might not know anyone, etc.

Since my expenses for the Chicago Seminars are basically $0 and I have made a little bit of money from the blog thanks to all the readers that are generous enough to use my links, I have decided to donate that money along with the money I am saving by not having to fly to the seminars or stay at a hotel, to sponsor 1 lucky FFU reader to fly in and attend the Chicago Seminars for the weekend all for FREE!

I am still working on the logistics and how exactly this contest is going to work, but the basics are that:

• 1 Winner will be selected and it may or may not be determined by finding a Golden Ticket hidden in a Wonka Bar.
• Everything for the entire weekend including entry fee, hotel, food, cab, and economy flight will be covered by yours truly.
• Either I can book everything, or I am more than happy to let the winner book their own itinerary and I can cut them a check. That way they will earn all the miles since that it obviously a major part of the experience!

I figure most of my readers are based in the U.S but who knows, so if there are people outside of the U.S that want to come to Chicago for the weekend, you are free to enter.

I don’t see why non-U.S residents should be disqualified because they decided to live somewhere cool outside of the U.S.

Regardless of where the Winner is from, if they want to bring a travel partner, that is fine as long as they pay for their flight (or use miles). I will cover the additional entry fee.

Anyways I am still working on how to administer the contest, but needless to say I AM EXCITED!

I’ll hopefully have some more information at the end of this week on how to enter!

As the blog grows, I hope to continue to offer these types of giveaways to FFU readers as you guys are the ones that really make this blog worthwhile!

I already know that I probably won’t be able to go on the SMD4 this year, so I am definitely planning on sending a surrogate to do some real-time blogging and report back to the FFU readers on their experience!

Thanks again for all the support and for making this an excellent first 3 months!

-Parag