009: How this 30 year old is SAVING his Subscribers $1,000,000s on International Flights! The Scott Keyes Story…

Background on Scott Keyes of Scott's Cheap Flights:

Scott Keyes if the Founder of Scott's Cheap Flights. He's the flight searcher-in-chief, spending 8-12 hours a day on Google Flights. He also helps oversee daily operations at Scott’s Cheap Flights. After finding some great deals with international flights, Scott agreed to share the deals with his buddies. To streamline the notification process, he set up a newsletter to which his friends could subscribe. Just a couple of years later, the newsletter was a thriving business.

Eventually his email list ballooned above the Mailchimp threshold for free services, Keyes had to start paying to send out his newsletter. So the Scott's Cheap Flights “Premium Membership” was born on Aug. 23, 2015. After three and a half months, Keyes had 646 premium subscribers. He generated more than $6,000 with the newsletter, almost by accident. At the time he was still a freelance journalist, writing for the likes of The Guardian, ThinkProgress and The Nation.

The growth of his newsletter, aptly named Scott's Cheap Flights, hasn't slowed down. By February, Keyes had generated $24,376 in revenue with 1,687 premium subscribers and 7,847 free subscribers, according to his second reddit forum. By this time, he had also stopped working as a freelance journalist in order to devote all of his energy to growing his business, and he had hired his first part-time employee.

By May of 2016, Scott's Cheap Flights was up to 6,230 premium subscribers, 53,547 free subscribers and $120,013 total revenue. Currently, Scott's Cheap Flights has 29,639 premium subscribers and 204,021 free subscribers (233,660 total) and, thanks to a Black Friday promotion, has now generated $963,234.48 in sales.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

[0:50] Scott’s Cheap Flights – subscription based email list. Their team hunts down cheap flights from Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak, and the likes. Send them to subscribers with instructions.
[3:03] He was a journalist.
[3:12] Need to travel because of work but because of his low salary he searched how to get cheap flights.
[3:57] Wrote an ebook “How to Fly for Free”
[4:15] “If it’s good for the airlines then it’s bad for consumers. And if it’s bad for the airlines then why would they offer frequent flyer miles? Why am I gonna play their game?”
[5:36] Compiled all the tips and tricks he know and wrote another ebook entitled “How to Find Cheap Flights”.
[5:46] He started a little email list for his friends.
[6:37] His list grew from a couple dozens of friends to 5000.
[6:57] He realized the demand and started thinking that maybe there’s a business opportunity for him.
[7:13] He launched his business 2 years ago.
[7:33] Today, his list is over 600,000.
[7:50] He posted a little map on Facebook about a round the world trip with his fiancée.
[8:09] His friend’s colleague interviewed him about his cheap travels and it went viral.
[8:53] The article had a link to the email list and that’s where he got his first 5000 subscribers.
[11:06] They offer free perks to new subscribers just to let them have the experience and convinced them to pay for the premium list where they can enjoy more advantages.
[15:28] He started out with $2 a month just to test the water.
[16:39] He was lucky enough to meet his business partner who helped him to take the business to the next level.
[21:15] From 3 people, his team has now 20 manpower.
[24:10] Most of these people, he found posting in facebook travel groups.
[29:02] He will set his alarm 6;45 in the morning and check cheap flights and check on his people via Slack.
[31:58] One of the challenging parts of his business is when they send out “mistake fare” to their subscribers just to be canceled by the airlines later on.
[33:01] Other challenges are website and email crashing.
[36:35] “If you feel that you can do well, or you can do better than the existing services, that’s a reason to go forward with it.”

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Zinus Green Tea Memory Foam Mattress
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Wunderlist
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Building internal structures to keep everyone on the same page during this period of rapid growth.