My needs were very specific.

Prophetically so. I needed a magazine, delivered to my door every week. The magazine needed to be packed with meaningful content. I wanted to be able to either study the contents in-depth or glance through the magazine when I had a couple of minutes to spare. It had to be based on Torah. I’m a Jew and some random Christian-evangelical weekly publication wouldn’t do it for me. Oh, I also needed the magazine to change my life.

Now in terms of tools, I had Google and a Visa issued credit card. That was it.
I launched Google on Chrome, my favorite browser, and typed; “Please help me find a weekly Torah magazine that features classic and original content, is; stimulating, inspirational, practical and accessible for the layman and scholar alike, can be delivered to my door and will change my life!”

Astonishingly, the results for that query were exactly zero. Great niche though, and I made a mental note to pursue with my publisher. Meanwhile, I still needed my fix and I had an endless amount of searches to use on Google. Thank G-d that’s still free- imagine if Larry and Sergey monetized each query? So with infinite possibilities at hand and the relentless desire to match my quest with the ultimate Torah magazine, I began hammering away at Google servers.

I can’t tell you how many possibilities and variations of the above query I tried. But I can tell you that I got lucky (the “I’m feeling lucky” feature on Google takes you directly to the first webpage that returns for your query). Finally, I found the right keywords that produced the exact result I was looking for: “Weekly torah magazine that will change my life” (You can try that). I whipped out my Visa and before I could say: “its freaky how Google knows what I need” I had subscribed to Chayenu.

Less than 10 days later the first batch of my Chayenu subscription arrived.

As I paged through the magazine with a cool satisfaction of having found what I needed to nourish my mind and soul, and the realization that despite Google and technology, print as a medium is not going away, I made another mental note to myself: no need to pursue with publisher. That specific niche has already been filled.