There are, for me, four main criteria in finding a good web host.

Excellent Uptime

Uptime is the percentage of time the web host's server or computer system is "up" or working. Downtime, meanwhile refers to the amount of time that the system is "down" or is non-operational. A good place to look for the uptime of a web host is at webhostingstuff.com where I found the web host of this site PinoyTechie.com, web.com.ph. As you can see, web.com.ph's current overall uptime is 99.97%, which is considered Excellent.

Server speed

Server speed is the amount of time a page from a site downloads to your computer. To test the download speed of your host, look for the sites hosted in your potential web host and enter their URL or web addresses at Vertain.com. After the test, Verttain.com will tell you if your site is up to standards. Pinoytechie.com for example has a current speed of 3.98 seconds which is within the acceptable rate of 3-4 seconds. Any result slower than that is a cause for concern.

Meanwhile, you can also compare and test multiple sites at the website speed tool of iwebtool.com. The results are labeled as either, Slow, Average or Fast.

Bandwidth Limit

In web hosting parlance, Bandwidth Limit is the amount of data in a single month which can be downloaded and/or uploaded by site visitors and administrators. If a visitor views a page, for example, that's a data download and if he or she, for instance, uploads a picture within the site, that's another type of data transfer. A site administrator uploading new pages to the site also uses up bandwidth.

A downloaded or uploaded page is usually measured in kilobytes of data or KB. 1000 KB is equal to 1 megabyte. 1000 MB is equal to 1 gigabyte or 1 GB. As a newbie, a minimum of 2000 MB or 2G worth of bandwidth per month is okay. You just upgrade as your needs increase.

Cost

The trick is to find potential hosts which meet the above criteria and at the same time affordable.

Among the aforementioned features, the Server Speed and the Uptime percentage are the most crucial and the most important things to consider, especially when you are trying to earn with your sites. If the server is too slow, the user will be impatient and might leave without seeing your site and if you site is down, well...