Forget these conga lines where you can look at ads for an hour and get 500 miles. Whoopie. If you have a weeklong stay at a property, and have some time to prepare, you can really juice it up. This should be illegal, it feels so good:

My weekly itinerary -
4 nights @ $225 Renaissance
$100 in restaurant/room service
$150 in hotel taxes

My cash awards -
Reserve room through Travelers Advantage ($900 * 5% rebate) = $45
Purchase $1100 in Marriott gift certificates at Volumebuy.com @ 25% discount on a 1% cash back Visa = $11
[Note: a 10% discount is available anytime, with special 25% off sales sometimes]
At checkout, use $1100 of certificates, pocket 25% discount ($1100 * 25%) = $275
Pay for $50 balance with 1% cash back Visa = $0.50

Total cash award for stay = $331.50

My point awards -
$1000 in room charges * 10 points/$ = 10,000 points
Gold member (for a little while longer @ 20% bonus) = 2,000 points
Pay balance of charges with Visa, get double points = 12,000 points

Total points for stay = 24,000 points

Repeat weekly until the gift certificate offer and double Visa offer expire. The 10% off Marriott gift certs are available anytime. This is even better than the Hyatt game I outlined a while back: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum60/HTML/000070.html