I believe e-Rewards only allows one transfer per quarter (can someone confirm this?). Therefore, it may be helpful to transfer once a while to hotel programs to bolster those accounts to help with hotel transfer hits. Of course, once it gets closer to GS time, it would be best to save those for the US GS hit.
Same thing with TopGuest - 50 points/day can really add up over a while and help with the lower threshold transfers (like BW or Choice 5000 points ... 100 check-ins over the course of a few months = free transfer if you don't stay at those chains). I didn't start hardcore TopGuesting until the GS and it helped me with my Hilton Transfer hit, but had I started last year, I could have saved $ with 2 other hotel transfers.
After a few weeks, I think
vysean's great site
GSScorecard.com will have useful data to see what hits take a while to post. These would be beneficial to study to see what should be done early.
Also, even though certain hits may have certain restrictions in terms of subscribing, it would be best to at least attempt miles-earning with them. For example, 21st Century said that one would get a hit for switching to them, but some people simply asked for a miles-earning quote and got the hit from that. They did it early and got the hit, while those who did it later may not be as lucky.
By the way, one hit that became expensive during the GS was the Buy Miles hit, because (1) the 100% bonus was only for the first 2 days of the GS and (2) the price per mile went up from about 2.95cpm after tax to over 3.7cpm in October. On the first day, I got 20K miles for $295, but today, the equivalent amount would cost $749! Obviously, if you were just going for the hit, it would be about $37.50 now for the minimum 1000 miles, but since I value US miles at about 1.4cpm, my 20K mile purchase hit was probably only about $15 extra, instead of $23 extra had I bought the 1000 miles today.
Lastly,
beltway, you have been amazing with this year's GS sub-forum. Kudos! Although to save you some angst next year, I think Lesson #1 should be
use the ******* search function! 