Hi. I'm the webmaster (I guess) for a small project. Well, hopefully it grows into a larger project, but for now we're starting out small. We'll be selling a DVD we produced through a web site I need to create. The DVD is the only product we'll be selling, or at least right off the bat.

I don't want to give away too many details, but it is a workout/biographical DVD starring a famous athlete. I'm not sure how well it will sell, but let's assume it become moderately successful; what would a good web hosting service be? What features will we need? We're looking to set up a dot-com domain name.

Thanks you for any help and/or suggestions.

Rian chances are most any web hosting will work fine. In time you may want a dedicated server as your site grows, but in the beginning any kind of shared hosting will probably suit you fine.

Look for the best uptime you can get (99.99% at least). Figure out how much storage space you'll need and how much bandwidth you think you'll use. Most hosts will probably offer more than you need.

Other things to consider are if you want to use Microsoft's IIS or Apache as the server software. You'll find hosts with both and your decision will mostly be based on what if any programming languages you'll want to use. Also decide if you'll need a database. You'll likely get one with your hosting, but some hosting packages may not have it.

And know that you can always upgrade your hosting account or move your site to another host or your own server.

Yes, and some hosts offer shopping cart services, if you'd like to utillize that feature along with your hosting. Otherwise you can go with something like PayPal or Google Checkout for payment processing for your item for sale. good luck!

Most any decent hosting company can handle/will offer what you need to get started. Just make sure that you can upgrade as needed as stated already. In fact, the above postings pretty much covered what you need.

There are several different shopping cart softwares out there that can easily get you going. Oscommerce comes to mind, so does Zen Cart and CubeCart. You can customize the templates to give your site a more personal look. If not sure, these are popular shopping carts and finding templates or someone to customize it for you should not be hard.

If you are going to sell online, you will need SSL and dedicated IPs.

Spend time in the offers section and ask questions. See what kind of replies you get. Someone will make sense to you. Most hosting companies are pretty good people. Just be wary of the unlimited super huge to good to be true offers. Someone always loses there.

You are hosting a business. Not a hobby. Look for that type of support and attitude from your hosting provider.

Almost all the relevant points have been mentioned:
1) Uptime fogures.
2) Zen cart/Cube cart/Agora shopping cart /OScommerce shopping cart installed
3) SSL certificate
4) IP address (you'll feel safer with it on a shared plan)
5) Stats on visitors;
6) You may also want some subdomains later, so check how many you are allowed on this plan;
7) forms of support that will be convenient for you.
check the plans that might suit you:
http://www.a2hosting.com/web_hosting.php
http://onthespothosting.net/shared.html
http://www.valuhost.com/standard_hosting_linux.htm