Hosting
It took me a long time to find this out - but unless you have a truly exceptional website with massive traffic, you are unlikely to need more than 100-200Mb of space. Don't be bamboozled by trying to compare the massive gigabyte offers of disk space and bandwidth being offered. Some of them are clearly offering their entire internet connection to every customer and banking on the fact that not everybody is going to be requiring service at the same time.
You may prefer to use a host in your own country but be prepared to pay more.
Control your own destiny. Many hosts offer various services, website design, shopping carts, email, autoresponders etc. These almost invariably tie you in to the hosting service. After all, the hosting service is not a charity. For independence, I would suggest that you select 'best of breed' services for autoresponders, shopping carts and website design services that you can host anywhere. That way you and only you have control over your website and how it works.
Control panel/user interface. If you are new to hosting then spend a little time investigating whether or not your host offers a commonly used control panel. When you start to open other hosting accounts with other providers it is very useful if you can select one with the same user interface - saves you having to go through another learning curve! I have settled on cPanel if only because pretty well every video tutorial you watch on marketing has the presenter using cPanel. So if it's good enough for established marketers it's good enough for me.
Kiosk
I came across Kiosk quite late but am glad I did. Not only for my own purposes but I have since found that it is the recommended host of Mike Filsaime and they don't come with a stronger recommendation than that.
The other major benefit is that when you are going to host several domains on the one account it allows you straight into the .whm (Web Hosting Manager) interface instead of forcing you to go through another master domain name as many Reseller accounts do. So you just have one userid/password step to go through instead of two. They also provide a bunch of free marketing tools directly accessible from your account - and a good affiliate system.
Find out more by clicking on Kiosk
PartnerProHosting
PartnerPro offers free set up of SmartOPTINPages. Very useful if you want to use this software from Stephen Pierce but are new to ftp and hosting. PartnerPro is relatively expensive for your first account but the only hosting company I've found where you can talk directly to the boss. He is in the same marketing business as we are so understands our problems and makes the time to relate to his customers. He also limits the number of accounts he puts on each server to maintain service and reliability - unlike many other hosts who load far too many - which inevitably leads to failures and downtime.
HostGator:
Most people report good experience . A range of packages with the standard being the $9.95/month. No contract required so you can pay and commit monthly. Consider the Reseller package as your requirements grow. As many domains as you like for $25/month.
Bluehost:
Similar experience/pricing to HostGator. Reliable host with cpanel front end.
HostMonster
(unlimited domains) Recommended by friends of mine.
Comments on Hosting »
This is a fantastic site and I love it here. The information is informative and extremely helpful that I will be able to use growing my writing business. I am a newbie and excited to be jump starting my writing since I have been writing forever.
Thanks for offering to host my first ever to have web site and I am so truly grateful and excited for you generous and kind offer to help me.
SMCC family member
Your site is terrific and I love it and the information is really useful to me and I will be visiting here often.
Bruce, this site is soooo informative for newbies I think i'm gonna be spending more & more time here reveiwing info. THANKS. It's great to see there is help for those feeling like they're standing in the middle of peak hour traffic with no one to help them get safely to the other side safely….. this site is the refuge island in the middle of the internet highway!
Maxiboy,
Glad the information was useful for you. It is simply the result of accumulated experience - and an example for all internet marketers that every bad experience is not all bad - it actually turns into useful knowledge.