[Hehe]

When I fly for work, I don't tend to think about this as my company pays for good seats (in exchange you get some brutally tight schedules... I once did a mini round-the-world trip to 7 cities in just under 5 days.)

But a few suggestion I can think of after flying so often are:
1) GET ON A PROGRAM!
Miles are worth roughly 2ct/mile... by not collecting miles, you are basically throwing money away. A round-trip to Asia is easily 10k+ in miles (more if you have status or fly in premium cabin), so by not collecting miles on a trans-pacific flight, you basically wasted $200+.
Which program to join really depends on your route and target. You could easily find info online.

2) Fly with enough time planning.
I usually can't make my planning when traveling for work, but when I have time to spare, I always ask the gate agent if they need any volunteers. This happens very often in popular routes during peak hours/dates.
I have scored over $2k in travel vouchers and been upgraded every time I give up my seat in 2013.
Basically what you do is, during check-in, ask the agent to see if the flight is full, if they say yes, make your way to the gate and you let the gate agents know that you are willing to volunteer if they need seats.
When they actually do need seat, they would usually come up with some lousy offers at first, but if you are persistent (remember, the worse case is that you get on the flight you suppose to fly in the seat you suppose to seat) and they are desperate enough, sometimes they have amazing offers.

In a flight from Taipei to HK, I got 4k TWD in cash+upgrade to fly the next flight (which was 1:30 later). It worked out great for me as I'd have had to wait at HKG for my flight of HKG-EWR anyhow.

Hope this helps other FF on here.