In a more sane model, webmaster directly pays for his site. If a complaint is made, company will generally be much slower on trigger, and much more likely to listen to webmasters than in advertising based model.

As advertisers have become more savvy to fact that promotion on internet is not nearly as cut-and-dry or simple as expected, they are spending their money more carefully. This has resulted in far less income for internet companies (resulting in many business failures), and it can be quite entertaining to see how desperate survivors are becoming.

Egroups moved their ads from bottom of their emails to top, and changed them from text links to graphics banners. Users of service hate this change almost without exception, but advertisers want their banners seen, and top is better suited for that purpose. It's completely irrelevant what users think (unless, of course, they defected in mass, which they have not done).

In addition, egroups subscribers were recently shocked to learn that they will now, by default, receive numerous spam emails in exchange for using service. There is now a new screen which lists all of different categories for this spam along with a yes/no option to allow it to be stopped. The default for everyone is YES, because Yahoo knows that most people will not bother to change it.

This naturally puts more advertisements in front of more people.

On other hand, Yahoo has obviously concluded that advertising model does not work well for it's GeoCities product. If you have a web site you are only allowed a tiny amount of bandwidth before site is shut off for rest of month. This means far fewer ads are shown. The purpose is to get webmasters to pay for their web sites (which would be a poor decision on part of most webmasters as their are many web hosts with far better service available at less cost).

So what is answer for consumer? Find services in which you are direct customer. You will generally receive far better customer service, and you might be surprised to find out that cost is not as bad as you might have thought.

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.