Weapons of Mass DistractionCheap Domains and Web Hosting

I've owned or otherwise run quite a few domains over the past 10 years.  It wasn't long ago when you had no choice but Network Solutions to buy your domains from, and if I'm not mistaken they charged $70 for 2 years (or was it one year?  someone that remembers please correct me!).  Nowdays things have changed quite a bit.  There are many domain registrars, and along with this competition came some insanely cheap domain registration fees.  I use domainmonger for all my domains at this time.  They charge $17/year (the 1 year renewal rate) and and also offer lots of other services, some of which are included with your registration.  For example, they are running the DNS for my domains as well, which I don't mind at all.  That is one less thing I have to worry about maintaining.   I'm sure there are cheaper registrars around, but none that I'd prefer to switch to.  It is too bad domain monger doesn't have an affiliate program because I could send them some customers. 

As far as actual web hosting goes, I am currently hosting my own sites on my small business DSL line.  In the past I have used other places to do my hosting.  They always had lots of features that is for sure.  The domain hosting market is so flooded now that it is hard to distinguish one hosting service from another.  They pile on the features they support and charge a very small price.  The main difference between hosting packages I see is the amount of data transfer you're allowed, the disk space you can use, and the number of email addresses you're allowed to create (does anyone actually use those??).  Ifyou are using Domain Monger to host your DNS, switching hosting companies shouldn't be too difficult.  Copy the site to the new host, making sure you have it all working, then make the DNS change.

If you are looking to make some money selling web hosting your best bet is probably to sign up for an affiliate program that doesn't require you to make an initial investment (like a reseller account).  You just refer a customer to them and get a commission rather than them buying the hosting service from you.

If you are looking for some serious business web hosting I highly suggest Yahoo.  For high-bandwidth commercial sites I wouldn't trust one of those small cheap hosting services.

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