Web hosting - Business beginnings

One of my best friends bought me the domain name of my choice for the company I want to start up on the internet. Unfortunately, unless I buy web hosting, I will always have adds displayed on the page.

Initially, finding the felicitous hosting company seemed like an easy task. However, I became disillusioned as I found that my choices were endless. So many companies over variations of the product that I have become confused.

To make matters worse, I am just a surface computer geek. Sure, I like to think I have web savvy talents, but when it comes to understanding what really goes behind running a site, I am pretty clueless.

Lucky for me, another friend of mine happens to be a software engineer, so I bombarded him with questions that were bothering me: How much space really is a GB? Is it important to have more than 1 SQL database? How much is a standard amount to pay per month for hosting?

After a long in depth conversation, I finally figured out my problem: I needed to know what kind of product I needed and then search and hunt.

I've narrowed it down to two criteria: Cost (the lower the better) and the option to have unlimited domain names per hosting plan. Now I just need to find the right company and I am on my way...