5. Space. How much space do you expect to eventually want for your web site? Planning ahead can save you lots of money later. If you expect to grow, look for a place that offers sites of 100 MB or more. Some services offer 500 MB sites for less money than others that offer only 30 MB.

6. Features. Consider what features you want to simplify development of your web site.

-Do you want access to a cgi-bin so that you can install your own scripts? -Do you want many scripts pre-installed and pre- configured? -Do you want to be able to use Microsoft's FrontPage? -Do you want autoresponders for email processing? -Do you want email aliases (automatic forwarding) so you don't need to check email in more than one place?

7. Guarantee. With so many hosting services to choose from, why not choose one that offers a guarantee? Services that offer a moneyback guarantee are confident that you'll be delighted with their service.

8. Cost. Look for hidden costs when comparing price.

-Do they expect you to pay for a long term in advance to get a good price? Choose one that doesn't bait you with a low price that's only available if you make a long-term commitment. -Will they handle registration of your domain for free? -If you're transferring an existing domain, will they submit domain change to InterNIC for free?

Choosing an excellent service to host your web site doesn't have to require luck. Knowing what to look for makes selection simple.

Good luck with your marketing and God Bless.

Now recalculate this number for each page, and you’ll know approximately how much bandwidth your entire site requires.

How can you reduce bandwidth usage? The easy way is to reduce size of files on your site, particularly images and other graphics. For example, you have a large image (i.e. 200KB) on your web page that is downloaded by each visitor every time page is requested. If you reduce this image to 20KB or remove it altogether, it will dramatically cut your bandwidth usage. It will also speed up your site’s performance.

For more information on optimizing images for Web, read my article, “Preparing Images for Your Web Site”, (www.isitebuild.com/imageoptimization2).

Web Sites that have MP3s to download, movies, music playing in background and large images, will obviously have a higher bandwidth. Large web sites or sites that expect a lot of traffic, will also use a lot.

If your site has mainly html pages and small images, your bandwidth will not be that high.

Bandwidth Tools Monitoring bandwidth http://www.utoronto.ca/ucres/netup.htm

Web Page Checker http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/page_size.cgi

Tuning up your Web Site http://websitegarage.netscape.com/

Bandwidth Tips If you make changes to your site by adding more files and/or web pages, recalculate your web site file size.

Estimate how many visitors will be accessing your web pages over next few months.

Recalculate bandwidth usage for your site. You may need more web space and bandwidth for your site to function effectively.

Check with your web hosting company to upgrade your hosting plan.

Conclusion Now you can avoid shock of exceeding your monthly bandwidth usage and paying higher hosting fees. You are now ready to receive more traffic to your site and therefore make more sales. ===========================================================

Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Site Design and Low Cost Hosting from $30/year. (http://www.isitebuild.com)