Originally posted by pb_red a couple of my geeky friends gave me a hard time about using gmail, rather than my own @mydomain email account, but otherwise people couldn't care less.
Bah, I went with gmail too when I got sick of dealing with email accounts from an endless list of domains. Even though I do all my emailing from a single gmail account, anyone communicating with me via email thinks he's dealing with a person from a specific company. For example, anyone who emails me at projectpontiac.com will get a reply from projectpontiac.com, and anyone emailing me at ottoplace.com gets a reply from ottoplace.com (usually a comical reply written in bassetese, because people email my dog for some reason). Gmail is the only email service that allows me to do all of that automatically and seamlessly, and without any added costs. It's been the best email arrangement I've ever had.
As far as image hosting, I find it's infinitely easier to use a picture sharing service (like Picasa) and just add those pictures to my own site. It saves me tons of bandwidth and runs much faster. I've been with the same hosting company for 8+ years, all my domains are hosted there. And each one only has 1GB of monthly bandwidth and 200MB of storage. That's more than enough for all my needs since I don't need to host pictures locally. All my server is providing is text, a few icons and a database. For $6.50 a month, it's hard to complain.
Lots of hosting companies offer a merchant software option that can be added to your site. For example, my hosting company offers Miva Merchant for $249 (one-time license cost) and they do all the setup work. All I then need to do is skin it, add products, and voila, an online store. Unfortunately, I hate Miva Merchant so I don't touch it. But maybe other hosting companies have better options.