Choosing a Host: Let's Get Cheap

I know why I avoided Network Solutions' hosting: the price. I have no idea why I chose to bypass OCS, my local ISP, and go after another host. Perhaps OCS wouldn't let me have my own domain on their free hosting plan. Perhaps they were already having business problems by then. OCS aside, I know exactly why I picked Icom. They were the cheapest package I found that published their ad in English. There may have been one cheaper, but it had the look of a man standing on a street corner in a trenchcoat. Wanna buy a watch? It's cheap. So... on February 19th, 2000, I signed up with Icom. It was to cost $49 for setup and $99 per year in hosting fees. Not long later, they sent me my temporary URL. I was now the proud owner of a site that said, "Under Construction." Now all I had to do was buy my domain name and point it. Icom sent me instructions on how to do this. These were something like stereo instructions (shades of Beetlejuice).