The dreaded "r" word, recession.

When the economy follows a downward trend and there's even less money left in your bank account than you'd like.

Lots of businesses hate recession. Any business that has wafer thin margins dreads an economic downturn. So does any business that isn't an absolute necessity (for instance, someone selling that extra large double latte) is fair game for problems.

So what to do?

How can you make sure that you come out of the recession not only alive but thriving?

Start by examining your business (or the extra business you want to get into).

Do people need your product? Will it help them save money or make extra money? Or will it provide some cheap and innocent pleasure to help take their mind off their worries for a short time?

Next up, is your business likely to be profitable? Can you actually earn any money from it? Is there a good margin to be achieved or are you likely to be the next road-kill victim when a bigger competitor shreds their prices?

Potentially, an internet business can tick most or even all the boxes for a recession proof business.

If you choose electronic products such as music tracks, electronic books and reports, software downloads and so on then there's no stock holding. Most of these areas can be good ones for either pleasure or helping people make money.

Internet businesses can also offer high margins. Not every one - Amazon only pays a few percentage points, for instance - but many products offer profit margins that would make a regular retailer turn green with envy.

Advertising costs can be low on the internet as well. Sure, they can be high if you want them to be - just open an account with Google Adwords if you want to go down the "open wallet" advertising route.

But there are still lots of ways to get the word out on the internet that are free or very close to free.

Articles like this one cost a bit of time typing but not much else.

Helping in forums is another cheap way to get the word out - be careful not to spam forums, otherwise you'll get your account banned, but taking a little bit of time to help others is almost always repaid and you'd be surprised how little effort it takes to turn yourself from "newbie" to "trusted expert".

Commenting on other people's blogs is another way to get the word out for the products you're promoting.

Writing your own blog is free or nearly free. Aim for at least a post a day and you'll soon find the search engines buzzing round your site like bees round a honey pot. And writing your own blog gives you somewhere to send the people you're helping elsewhere - all you need to do on a forum, for instance, is give a brief reply and then say something like "I don't want to clog up this forum with a long reply, so check out my blog for a longer answer".

Do some or all of these things in an industry that doesn't wilt at the first sign of a recession and you'll come out the other end of the economic downturn with more cash than you know what to do with!