One of the things I love about local and the Web in general are the crazy niches you can go after like Find a Mohel.  I was checking out the profile of one of my Twitter followers @jwegener and found this great service he created with his sister, ExitStrategyNYC.  The concept behind it is pretty simple, it tells you where the best place is to stand on a subway car to have the most efficient exit from the platform.

When I lived in NYC I was pretty proud of my ability to pick the right place to stand on the subway.  Now everyone can feel that power that previously took years of hard-fought experience.

Of course as this thing becomes more popular, it will become self-defeating as it will become harder and harder to get close to the right door.  But such is the fun of local.

Every business has their own secret time-saving tips.  How are you helping your customers save time?

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7 Response Comments

  • Jonathan Wegener  May 18, 2010 at 9:37 am

    “Of course as this thing becomes more popular, it will become self-defeating as it will become harder and harder to get close to the right door”

    It’s funny that a lot of people have said the same thing: what will you do when *everybody* is crowding in the car for the right door? My answer is always the same — when it gets to that point, I’ll be retired on a beach from the earnings 😉

    Jonathan

    P.S. You’ve inspired me to push a little harder on findthemohel. I gave up for a while after some frustrating cold call sales attempts to mohels 🙂

  • Andrew Shotland  May 18, 2010 at 10:04 am

    Yeah there are a lot of dicks in the mohel biz

  • 411 yellow web pages  May 19, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    Wow this is great, is it just for NYC or are other cities included??

  • Andrew Shotland  May 19, 2010 at 12:44 pm

    Think it’s just NYC at the moment.

  • Jonathan Wegener  May 19, 2010 at 12:47 pm

    So far it’s NYC, but I have emails from a bunch of mohels in other cities, so I’ll probably add those cities later this week.

  • Brian Bien  May 21, 2010 at 8:44 am

    I’d have to agree that ExitStrategyNYC is one of those zero-sum games 🙂

    @Jonathan – maybe you should just outsource the cold calling part? Also, consider the 8coupons strategy that was used in NYC. They started out trying to deal directly with SMBs at first, getting them to create the content (mistake) – and then changed their strategy to creating content themselves first.

  • Jonathan Wegener  May 21, 2010 at 1:22 pm

    Possibly. Alternatively, I maybe should try to befriend them and ask them what direction they would take for building a website for findig a mohel, rather than trying to close a deal on the first call. Ie ask them for advice and then ask how much they’re wiling to pay and then charge.

    We’ll see!