Your web site could be your greatest tool.  That is, if it stays up.  The truth is there are going to be times when your site is down.  It always seems to occur at the absolute worst time, when you would have the most traffic and possibly sales.  There are times too, when it can be down for way more than you think it should be, like an hour or more.  So what can be done about this?

If you find this situation happening frequently, i.e., more than two or three times per year, you may want to consider finding a better host.  But in reality, down time is a reality that you have to deal with.  One way to circumvent being down for an extended period is to try dual hosting for safe measures. 
 

Dual hosting is what sounds like.  You have all of your hosting files on different hosting providers.  This way if your site is down, you can just switch to your designated backup provider.  This was much more impractical in the beginning when it would take up to 48 hours for a change in domain servers to propogate.  But today, by using a domain registration company that has a propagation of minutes instead of days, it becomes an acceptable solution.  Godaddy is one such provider that propagates in minutes instead of days.

 
The main drawback of dual hosting for safe measures is that you need to maintain the same files at both places.  But this can be a blessing in disguise.  If you do not backup your files regularly, than this will help in that area as well.  It will actually force you to back up your files because you'll need them for the switch over.

What about the cost? Web hosting is so cheap nowadays that you can get decent, reliable hosting for three or four dollars per month. Is is worth an extra three dollars to implement dual hosting for safe measures? You bee the judge. My vote is yes. You'll have your entire site backed up and you can easily switchover to your backup site if you find that your main provider is down. And you can even leave the backup turned on until it goes down. Then, you can simply switch back to the original. Now if both are down this solution won't help much. But the chances of that happening are pretty slim. If you really wanted to get crazy, you could introduce a third site for even more safety.

Two companies that could be used for dual hosting are HostGator and HostMonster.