The thing that will help you most if flexibility with schedule. Certain flights will have heavy loads up front while others less so. If you can fly on flights (usually patterns by day or week and time of day) that have lighter bookings all of your options become much more possible. If you need to book on certain high peak flights then all of your options become hard or expensive. If you have very specific flights you need without much flexibility, booking paid J might be your best bet if you are booking early enough that more affordable fare classes are available.

one last option you didn’t mention could be booking award tickets with partners when the cheaper award inventory is available (also somewhat hard) but there used to be a pretty good deal booking via etihad guest.