A great way of earning airmiles is by using hotel programs such as rocketmiles.com, these sites pay the airlines for miles and pass them onto you when you book. The catch is rates are often higher than you can find online. However sometimes paying over the odds is worth it if you get a decent haul of miles.

Using Rocketmiles and Virgin Atlantic as an example. We will look at hotels in New York, Chicago and LA next Saturday night.

In each city good quality hotels in the $350-$400 range will give you 10,000 Virgin miles a night. Now you may not want to spend so much on a hotel, but 10,000 VA miles are enough for one way ticket to London from the east coast.

Considering this it may be worth your while to upgrade your hotel, enjoy a night somewhere you might not usually stay and fly across…