If you want to focus on new/amateur users - why not create packages targeted at the type of site they want to host.
For personal use:
Small personal webpage
Personal/family picture gallery
Portfolio / Resume
Etc.

For business use:
Intro company website
Gallery / inventory website
High traffic/ affiliate programs, and so on.
Etc.

Impose limits on each package of course, but give each one generous limits based on it's use. This way your user is buying their "type" of website package, and not just looking at dollars and cents vs. space and bandwidth (which could mean nothing to them). Focus on the type of website they want, and you're selling them the requirements to get that accomplished. Make the limits known of course, but you don't have to focus on that.

Haha, very true. Disk space is the least of our worries also.

To be honest our oldest server and probably most hit server passes less than 300gb per month. We don't run anything too heavy though, but still all servers try to stay less than 50% load on any stat (space/transfer/proc). You will know if your provider doesn't do the same.

Just find out who others go with like your mates, and see how they are, if they have problems, dont go with them, if they are all ok, give it a try!

Obscenely high bandwidth and/or storage quotas and 24/7 live support for $1.50/month. That would be a dead giveaway. The numbers behind the business show that no more than one person could work for the company and it still be profitable - and one person can't really "work" 24/7. :P

Roj

It depends on how much webspace and bandwidth the host may have could vary on prices. If they are a reseller they will usually do something like 500 MB / 5 GB for $9.95 / month. If you are a person with a dedicated server or multiple dedicated servers you may offer prices such as 500 MB / 20 GB / $9.95 a month. It all boils down to resources. You can spot the fraudlent hosts very easy. If you see one offering 500 MB webspace and 200 GB bandwidth for $4.95 / month they are committing an act of fraud! The people that commits fraud just want to make me show them up and buy their package and let my free image hosting site eat up 125 GB of their bandwidth.

The best way to spot a bad apple is just use a bit of common sense. Definitely do not bite on the first offer that you get - instead, take the time to look things up. Do just a little research, compare prices from various companies and find out why this company is able to offer it for so much less (in many cases many, many times less). In many cases, contact the companies and ask them why their prices are more/less than another. Test their support as well with the above and other questions. It's a common theme that these cheap hosts don't have but 1 or 2 staff maximum (yes there are some exceptions, but usually this is because of a web space for support deal).

In all, just use a bit of common sense. A website is an investment, and with any good investment you don't go charging willy nilly into it.

Stay away from unlimited space and/or bandwidth. Unlimited subdomains, unlimited e-mail accounts, doesn't mean that it is too good to be true, but unlimited space/bandwidth=too good to be true.

Hold on now. Your right about unlimited space and bandwidth, but nto about unlimited sudomains, email, etc. What this means on this part is that its unlimited until you run our of space. It clearly states on my site features like these that are "unlimited" may be used until it affects the progress of the server. It depends on how a host set its limit and how well of a configured server can run. I know on invisionfree.com they had several thousands of message boards on 1 server and yet it still function properly with all the MYSQL being ran on it. This would be an example of a well configured server.