I'm on a low bandwidth connection right now, so I can't watch that video.

I am not clear on how a $6/mo plan can compare to a $150/mo plan. You said the $6/mo plan would work, then go on to say if you need more try the cloud servers.... So you can see how I might be confused and would need to know exactly how to tell when to upgrade, how long it takes, and most of all, what to expect in advance of launching my site (probably not many hits, but anyway). I need the fastest speed possible the day of launch, so I'm also wondering if it is more cost effective to have the images hosted on a different server.

And now they are boldly PIMPING their products on a Democratic forum...nice.

It took 10,000 of their current customers leaving their hosting services for them to even listen.
Now they claim that they were just wrong, and apologize? Bullshit. Choose another provider.

DU is now allowing companies to freely advertise on here. Maybe Rush Limpballs can be the next to sign up!
There goes the neighborhood.

I've worked as a web developer and owned a consulting company that performed a lot of development work for both the web and desktop. I've been out of the game for a while, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

1. GoDaddy might not be appropriate for you. Judging on the spammed (and now deleted) post above from Mr. GoDaddy, they are interested in selling you something, whether you need it or not. That has been my experience w/ GoDaddy in the past, and combined with their poor ethics I don't suggest them to anyone anymore. I now use http://www.networksolutions.com for the few domains I still manage, but you're free to choose whomever you want. GoDaddy should be far down your list of choices.

2. Any shared hosting site you use has the possibility for performance issues simply because the # of virtual sites that are crammed into each web server sometimes gets enormous. If you end up with thousands of unique visitors each day, you might be okay. If you're getting tens of thousands, you may want to look at a dedicated solution. Those get spendy, so if you don't have a way to monetize the site, you're going to be paying for the service yourself.

3. If a shared plan isn't sufficient, you can try a dedicated server. I used a company called CrystalTech (now named The Small Business Authority) that worked pretty well for me. However, their prices are going to be extremely expensive when looked at in comparisons against shared plans. At CrystalTech, it looks like their pricing starts at about $90 and goes up from there. Note that I'm using CrystalTech as an example because I've used them in the past, and they are fairly representative of what you'll get with a Windows based dedicated solution. You're free to go anywhere you like, and may save some money if you find a Linux based solution.

4. If a shared plan is insufficient, and you don't have the money for a dedicated server, you may want to look at some of the Cloud services. The only one I have experience with is the Microsoft Cloud offering, named Azure. As a developer, it's been really good, but I do more than just dropping websites. I have a couple of web services that serve data to front-end clients. I assume, though, that you can use a cloud service for a regular HTML website. As to the other companies offering Cloud services (like Amazon), I can't speak to them because I haven't used them. I haven't heard anything bad, but again, stay away from GoDaddy if you can. The great thing about the cloud is that you only pay for what you use. If you have light traffic and are using very little storage, you'll pay a lot less. As you get more traffic, you can spin up additional processors, add extra storage space, etc. The monthly costs of a Cloud service can vary greatly, but a small website will probably cost you somewhere between the price of a good shared hosting plan and a bargain basement dedicated plan.

5. E-Commerce is a technology that's pretty mature. Since there are lots of potential solutions out there, you can pick and choose the one you find works for you, without a need to reinvent the wheel. I've used http://www.bigcommerce.com/ in the past with success. Again, you are free to search for a solution that's right for you, but use GoDaddy only as a last resort.

In my situation, it makes no sense to pay for a better server until I know I'm getting more traffic. That's the goal, really. I'd like a Web Host(which might not exist) that automatically increases performance on an as-needed basis. I know this exists in virtual networking environments like the one I manage here at work, but I do not know if an Web Host will do it.

I tried a couple other Web Hosts in the past. At least one of them has great reputation among techies. But, one day it became gruelingly slow, and when I asked about it, they were zero help. And they have no phone support. That's when I switched to GD. I also had another small company host for me once, and they were incredibly mean to me when I called about a billing mistake they made. A lady actually called my wife 'stupid' when she called. I'm done with small companies unless I have a special reason to use one. I'm sure NetworkSolutions is good, so I'll look into them. So far, though, GD has been fine. I do not mind getting a call from them every now and then to check up on my status, and perhaps sell me something. I'm similar to them, in that I also want to make money.

GD was initially very fast compared to my previous Web Hosts. Also, I think I will offset some of the work to other servers. I was wondering if this is a common technique. The pictures will be a large part of the site, so I think it would be worth giving them their own server.

The site I'm creating is not really an e-commerce site. It should attract lots of visitors, and that should generate ad revenue. The site is design in such a way that the visitors will not mind having ads, and in fact, they will want them there and benefit from them. I think they will deliver a relatively high click thru rate. After I get a lot of traffic I'll start other revenue techniques.

Like I said, automatic scalability would be best, if such a thing exists. (also, I'm using Microsoft MVC to create the site)

Why don't you chech your website traffic in Google Analytics. It is the best and simple way to monitor your traffic.

I have not released my site yet. When I do I'll use GA as well as my own monitoring methods such as this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2543038/bandwidth-monitoring-in-asp-net

But I need to know that I can immediately scale up the server to provide the speed users expect. I guess I'll just need to start renting a dedicated server. Although I still do now know when, under what circumstances, that should happen. How do I know what the current speed of throughput is versus the potential speed if I had a dedicated server? I'm told I have unlimited bandwidth, but that does not matter to me if it is 10x slower than a different server. Processor speed is also an issue.