If you're a Sitecore developer and you love working on the platform but don't have the money to buy a personal license for your own site, you should check out Sitecore Express. Sitecore released a version of Sitecore 6.0 that directly marketed toward developers for non-commercial use. You'll need to login with your SDN credentials and you'll be mailed an express license. The license runs for a year but as long as you're still a registered developer you can continue to renew it. The system runs directly off the master database which for me is fine. It also mean you can't publish and you won't be using workflow but you still get the content management and template definition. It is a 6.0 version so there are a lot of new features you're not going to get access to but it's a great tool and it'll allow you to use all that high powered code you've been developing between projects.
Also if you're going to host it on shared hosting you will see some performance issues and limitations. My host allows multiple databases per site but if you're stuck in that unfortunate position then you'll likely need some guidance on setting up Sitecore on a single database.