(FORTUNE Small Business) – When I tally up all the things I hate doing, the list comes out to a nice round number: absolutely everything. What I didn't realize until now was that everybody else feels the same way. What makes me so sure? Look around, and you'll realize that nobody does anything for himself anymore: Business is brisk for entrepreneurs marketing themselves as picnic arrangers or wardrobe organizers or address-book alphabetizers. The good news for those of us who would rather spend our time doing something important--say, watching Malcolm in the Middle--is that no job is too asinine for this new batch of intermediaries.

Elise Wetzel was recently on duty at the playground with fellow moms (quaint, how some parents still watch their own children) when she heard one of them bragging about the iPod she had just gotten as a present. "Someone said, 'The real gift would be to have somebody who would go to the trouble of putting the music on there for you,' " Wetzel, 40, recalls. "That is the kind of idea I hear, and I think people would pay for that kind of service. I know they would."

But no, she's not starting that business anytime soon. Quite a few folks have beaten her to it. And anyway, she wouldn't have time. That is because two years ago Wetzel founded Pasadena-based iSold It, a retail store where customers pay a commission to have her employees sell their goods for them on eBay. It has since grown to 100 franchises. "I tried the auction process myself, and I saw there was room in there for an intermediary," says Wetzel, whose national competitors include hundreds of local players, along with AuctionDrop, the industry leader that teamed up with UPS last year (for a profile, see fsb.com). Apparently no one told her that intermediaries are supposed to have gone the way of CRM, the software once touted as replacing all those sales reps you still reimburse for their Appletini and omelet breakfasts.

Remember when the Internet first began replacing everything interesting in our lives? Experts proclaimed that we had entered the age of "disintermediation," wherein middlemen would be squashed like squirrels in summertime. Airlines and hotels would sell directly to travelers, edging out agents. Manufacturers would market to consumers, decimating all kinds of retailers. And singles would hook up online, leaving yentas with even heavier hearts (not that they were complaining). All of us would somehow feel our way in an unfamiliar universe devoid of stockbrokers and real estate agents and sexual surrogates.

Yet there now seems to be a broader "middle class" of entrepreneurs than before. In San Francisco, Jim Rushforth last year opened up Auto Trainers & Advisors, devoted to holding seminars and writing manuals that, he says, "teach people how not to get screwed by the auto industry." Pile & Co., a Boston consulting firm, boasts a fast-growing division (sales up 30% this year) that "helps big advertisers figure out ad agencies," says chief marketing officer Chris Colbert, 46. There are go-between businesses now wedged between you and your friends (networking consultants), you and your flab (personal trainers), and you and your life's mission (CEO coaches). In fact, the intermediary market has fragmented into cybermediaries (Internet-based deal brokers), infomediaries (linking companies and online suppliers), and mediaries that are so new they have yet to be assigned annoying prefixes.

Surely the great business builders in this age of anti-disintermediation will be those who boldly refuse to underestimate anyone's ability to pass work off to someone else. "The business to get into is any kind of personalized handholding," advises consultant Jack Derby. I believe him. So I asked if I could contact him again for his help in trying to figure out this phenomenon.