to close or not to close...

I had reached the conclusion recently that it was time to close the internet site for my business. In the last six months the only sale I have had came from my mother, who orders from me directly (sometimes it helps to know the owner, I guess!). In spite of a respectable amount of traffic on the web site, visits have not resulted in sales. The costs to keep the web site operational is more than $150 a month (remember this is a commerce site, which handles shopping carts, credit card processing, and so on, and there are bank fees for handling the credit card processing), a lot to swallow when there's no money coming in.

Over the weekend I talked to the company that hosts the site about archiving it in the event that I want to re-establish it later on. No problem. Yesterday I was ready to make the call to pull the plug, and then...

an order came in. It wasn't a big order--two cards, but it was an order from someone I don't know. Some research this morning indicates that most traffic comes to the site for prayer beads, not for cards. Prayer bead sales might actually pay for the site, but without orders...

Oddly enough, it is occuring to me that perhaps I ought to pray about this!