lucy24 - 10:42 pm on Apr 17, 2011 (gmt 0)

Cheap bandwidth and massive amounts of disk space have basically leveled the playing field with respect to hosting these days.

But those aren't the only variables. Somewhere along the line when I wasn't paying attention, my host simply stopped measuring disk space and bandwidth. (As you can probably guess, I was using less than 1% of the allotted amounts of each.) What you can choose to pay for is dedicated RAM, which can be an issue if everything on your site is built dynamically, or if the site involves a lot of user interaction. A user who has to sit twiddling their thumbs for several minutes while a page loads up or a blog post gets updated is a disgruntled user. And a disgruntled user is one who doesn't recommend your site to other people, who in turn will bump up your visitor count to the point where you can make money off advertising.

This is not likely to be an issue for a just-getting-started 14-year-old, but eventually it will be something to look at.