Entrepreneurs don't have very good choices in the face of what looks to be a rather unforgiving global recession. Layoffs and pay cuts undermine morale, and the company's ability to produce its products. Cut back on marketing, and you risk disappearing from the public view just when you need to be doing the opposite. Slash product development and, well, then what's the point?

Work harder? Haven't we already spent a year or two or three working harder?

Yet if there is one thing that venture capitalists and other financiers agree on when it comes to startups, it's that they have to cut the burn rate, i.e. lose less money, or depending on the circumstances stop losing money altogether. "Make the tough choices" is an easy piece of advice. When it's your company and your reputation on the line, though, making the tough choices can feel like cutting off one of your own limbs.

There are only two ways to reduce the burn rate – increase revenues or decrease expenses – and at NewWest.Net we're trying to attack it from both sides. First, we're doing everything we can to maximise revenues in the short term. Last week, for example, we had a conference, and we had one of our sales people – as well as a volunteer, my wife – work on some last-minute telemarketing to get a few more attendees.

Normally we wouldn't have invested in this, since the sales person could have used that time to work on longer-term deals and we already had enough sign-ups to make the event a success, but we've decided to push as hard as we can on every short-term revenue opportunity.

Similarly, we're sweetening some of our advertising offers and increasing the incentives for pre-paid, long-term contracts. We've long been planning to increase our prices on January 1, and we're sticking with that, but in the meantime we're using that as an incentive to get people to commit now. Again, it's all about what we think are the best near-term revenue opportunities.

As the publisher and CEO, I'm also spending much more of my own time on sales. (Some of the product development and longer-term strategising will have to wait.) When the CEO shows up, that sends a powerful signal to clients that you are really, really serious about the business, and that can help close some deals. In a small, community business like ours, it also gives an opportunity to express solidarity – we're all in this downturn together! – and I think that can help too.

On the product side, we've put some initiatives on the back burner, though we cast these changes as delays rather than cancellations. It's often better to suspend or delay projects, even if you don't know when you'll be able to pick them up again, rather than simply cancel them. Everyone understands that the environment is difficult, and if you're forthright about why you're pulling back on something now, you can hold onto the opportunity to come back to it later.

When it comes to cost cutting in a small company, it's tough, because there simply isn't that much to cut. We're looking at every single expense item and deciding whether it's critical for the short term. Some insurance policies will probably go, for example – risky, maybe, but no more risky than not getting expenses in line with revenues. We're also seeing where we can do trade deals with vendors – advertising in exchange for services – and see if we can save a few dollars there.

In the end, though, most of our costs are wages and payments to contract and freelance writers. It's difficult to cut here without undermining the products to the point where we start to lose audience and traffic. These are the hardest decisions of all, because they involve people and their families, and because they force product choices that are very hard to get right. The conference business, for example, is one of our most successful initiatives, but will that continue to be the case in a down economy, and if so should we pull back in anticipation?

My answer on conferences is to stay the course. But on that, as on other things, I sure hope I'm right. Because one thing is for sure in trying to manoeuvre a small start-up in a big economic downturn: the margin for error is narrow indeed.

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Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard