How to estimate bandwidth

[ram]

How do I know whether I should go with the host that offers 2G bandwidth or the one that offers 10gigs?

My site is still under construction, and not yet hosted. When done, it will be a site for a small business. There will be jpeg pictures of the products for sale. A typical customer will only buy one product at a time (no need for a shopping cart). There will be other pages with text and pictures describing how the product is made.

I'm looking for experience like "my site has x amount of pages and y amount of hits and uses z amount of bandwidth." Or some back of the envelope formula like "multiply the number of pages by the number of estimated hits by x".

Also, does bandwidth get used only when visitors visit the pages, or does it also get used during admin tasks?

Thanks!

[HarborNetworks]

Bandwidth usage depends on how your host has it setup. Many count the bandwidth used in uploads and downloads via FTP also. But as your a new site. Start off with the minimum. I would hate to see you pay for something your not going to use. When customers as me that question, I first ask them if it's a new site or not. When your starting your website off, you are not going to get high volumes of traffic immediately unless you have a ton of advertisement out there. Expect things to begin to grow as times passes on. Start small as you develop the site and add content to it. Constantly monitor your bandwidth and see what your using. As you find yourself getting close, decide if you need to upgrade or not. Chances are it may take some time before things explode for your site, however it's not impossible to explode overnight either. It's personal prefference. If you have the cash to spend, then it's up to you. If your wanting to test the waters and see what's going to happen, then start small and grow as your business grows.

[northwind]

You see, 2GB of Bandwidth can be considered a lot for a new site but its usually the minimum you would go for just in case. =).

I recieve about 200 - 300 unique visits a day with like 100,000's hits.

Only uses about 23-30 megabyte a day. Multiply that by 30 and its still only about 900MB a month. And for a new site you won't be getting 200-300 unique visits a day. But also your bandwidth depends on how big the images are.

Usually uploading is counted towards your bandwidth as well.

[eHostSpace]

hahah..in my opinion, the more the merrier..!! haha..but it depends also. I don't want 10gb of lousy bandwidth but I want 2gb of premium bandwidth :P