hosting is a race to the bottom sort of business. if someone can create some value in it and charge money from the consumer, they are not doing anything wrong and should be applauded.
And then there's EIG, which basically buys out everything in sight, pretends they're still independent and cuts costs at every opportunity.
Not to mention the people starting up hosting companies in the summer holidays, only to run them into the ground or shut down in a few months.
There's a difference between making money and trying to trick people with shoddy products and services.
As for how the other guys get customers... Deals usually. Sometimes literally on web hosting forums, where they talk advantage of the offers section til they inevitably get banned.
Another popular scam was to lock access to an account when a charging period expired so the owner couldn't access any domain transfer tools, and only allow access and transfers on payment of another full year of hosting.
It's a shady business. IMO there's no real reason why it should be.
But I'd say WordPress itself is pretty easy, at least if you're sticking to well known plugins and the core features. Just needs to have the options and text reworded a bit to make things a bit clearer for someone who's never used a CMS before.