I'm a CouchSurfer myself (in fact, I'm hosting a traveler right now) and I have to say a couple of things about his CouchSurfing advice.
1) Do not use CouchSurfing if you just want free accommodation. The author says this, but it needs to be emphasized. I've never met a CouchSurfer that likes hosting people who just want a place to crash. The goal of CouchSurfing is to meet people you otherwise wouldn't meet and learn about places and cultures in ways that are usually impossible. If you genuinely want to get an insider's view of a place and you want to connect with local people, then by all means CouchSurf, but otherwise stick with hostels.
2) CouchSurfing has a bootstrapping problem. Most hosts and travelers won't want to host you or be hosted by you unless you have a few friends and references on the site. But it's hard to get friends and references unless you stay with people or host people. There is a way to get around this, though: local meetups. Most reasonably sized cities have a group of CouchSurfers that have regular meetups, either weekly or monthly If you go to a few of these, you can get some friends and references on the site, and then it'll be much easier to find hosts and/or surfers.
There are a few great sites suggested here, especially http://www.tripeedo.com and http://www.whichbudget.com for airfare search. But I wish the entire last paragraph wasn't an advertisement for a scammy, pay-for-advice frequent flier site.
I've found www.skyscanner.net quite good too, especially if you have a flexible schedule, as it lets you choose a whole month and shows you which days have the lowest lowest fares.
Interesting that the site is called "Man vs. Debt" and then tries to convince you to buy a guide on how to collect frequent flyer miles. If you are fighting debt, you could just not fly until you have money...
The point here is that you'd save a lot of money by buying the guide and thereby allowing yourself to travel. (I'm not saying I'd by the guide because I won't...)
A friend of mine has a podcast about travel hacking the frequent flyer system over at upgrd.com. It's got a lot of great stuff. I just got my first upgrade to first class for free this past week flying back home from MN to CA.
If you're interested in traveling a lot, and getting the most out of it, it's worth a listen.
1) Do not use CouchSurfing if you just want free accommodation. The author says this, but it needs to be emphasized. I've never met a CouchSurfer that likes hosting people who just want a place to crash. The goal of CouchSurfing is to meet people you otherwise wouldn't meet and learn about places and cultures in ways that are usually impossible. If you genuinely want to get an insider's view of a place and you want to connect with local people, then by all means CouchSurf, but otherwise stick with hostels.
2) CouchSurfing has a bootstrapping problem. Most hosts and travelers won't want to host you or be hosted by you unless you have a few friends and references on the site. But it's hard to get friends and references unless you stay with people or host people. There is a way to get around this, though: local meetups. Most reasonably sized cities have a group of CouchSurfers that have regular meetups, either weekly or monthly If you go to a few of these, you can get some friends and references on the site, and then it'll be much easier to find hosts and/or surfers.