Thank you for your reply. I am not quite sure what you mean by 'some good research' as I have had a look through the forums for similar topics but nothing that jumps out at me as to DIY cheaper. I do appreciate your time though
Sorry to be cryptic
There are ways where you can fly premium cabins for not much more (or sometimes less) than economy fares if you spend some time reading & research, and are generally flexible with travel dates & carriers. What many people have including myself have done is buy airline miles and then redeem them for business/first class flights. Sometimes one can buy enough points to go anywhere in the world and back, in business or first, for like less than $2,000. As its redeeming award seats, you need to be generally flexible with travel dates and carriers.
For example, there's a promotion with American Airlines (AA) this month. You can then redeem on their One World partners eg. Qantas. Here's the thread....
http://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/community/american-airlines-aadvantage/new-april-bonus-points-when-59063.html
You need 120,000 AA points to fly from AUS to EUR and back in business class. So what you do is;
You can effectively buy 95K (69K+26K bonus) at a cost of around AUD$2000.
You're a bit short
however because you are now savvy at looking around on how to buy points know you can buy 20,000 points from the hotel group SPG (AUD$560) which then you can transfer to AA which will give you 25,000 AA points.
120,000 points heavier and $2560 less in the wallet, that's now enough points to go to Europe and back in business class. When you book, you pay a couple of hundred in taxes and off you go
I looked at the January 2015 a few days ago and I saw good availabilty to/from Europe.
The caveat is, if you are not a member of any of those programs, you probably have to be a member for x amount of days before they allow you to buy etc so unfortunately by the time you join now, this months promotion would have ended and you would have to wait for the next
Good luck in your search though.