Have you tried to search “Sell me this pen” in Google?
If you did, you probably know the reason why, and you won’t be surprised to see there are tons of results related to this question.
If you didn’t, probably you will be curious to know why people searched this? What exactly “this pen” is?
It is not about any pen.
“Sell me this pen” is one of the famous selling scenes in the movie “Wolf Of Wall Street”. This question is triggered by one of the characters in the scene when he says: “I can sell anything”. Then, he is challenged by this famous phrase: “Sell me this pen”.
When I first heard this, it really triggered my curiosity about how the screenwriter was going to answer this simple question, perfectly. And they did a great job.
Let’s watch this fantastic scene (or you can jump to 00:54 for the exact “sell me this pen” part)
Jordan Belfort : Brad, show them how it’s done. Sell me that pen. Watch. Go on.
Brad : You want me to sell you this f****ng pen?
Jordan Belfort : That’s my boy right there. Can f****ng sell anything.
Brad : Why don’t you do me a favor. Write your name down on that napkin for me.
Jordan Belfort : I don’t have a pen.
Brad : Exactly. Supply and demand, my friend.
Jordan Belfort : He’s creating urgency.
Yes, creating an urgency is one of the common strategies to sell products. It works as somehow it makes sense when it is in right timing.
However, how urgent could it be for someone who is looking for a pen online, when you can go to the closest stationary shop and buy one? Obviously not so urgent. But if you search “pens” in Amazon, you could easily find over 200,000 search results.
What does it mean? It means, people are making money from selling pens online. There is opportunity there.
If they can earn money online by selling pens, so can you.
First of all, you need to know who your customers are and what they want.
This is almost a universal golden rule of thumb, before you sell any product, you have to understand your target buyers and what is their motivation to buy the product.
Remember, this is a very important and essential factor, which determines your online business direction and strategy.
Who are they? What they want? What is their desire?
These are the main questions to ask to help you position your target audience.
Those who are going to buy pens online, probably are not in a rush. There is other priority in their mind to look for buying pens online, rather than go to a stationary shop.
For work –
It could be a need for order size and better pricing if you are a staff in charge of the company’s stationary supply. Convenience would be another added value for them to choose to buy online.
This type of audience usually follows the order history and would just repeat the same online shopping process.
This type of audience has very high potential for clicking the buy button and make the payment. Most of the time they would go to their bookmarked online shops directly, to do pricing comparison research.
So, if you are running a pen online shop, or if you are the supplier, you have to make sure your products are competitive enough in terms of price, delivery time, and inventory.
At the same time, your website need to be user friendly, meaning easy to navigate, with functions to compare items, saved into wish list, re-order function with history pre-loaded and so on, anything you can think of to save their precious time.
Don’t want to host any stock? You still can make money by “selling” pens by being an affiliate marketer.
How?
You can build a comprehensive website for your local audience to check all different types of stationary in one place, with all the local shopping sites latest offers, stock and pricing, delivery time, etc. All the information.
So they can compare and make thorough decision easily from your website, and click to your affiliate link to continue the check out process while you earn commission through this.
They buy pens online due to their job and appointed task and the importance of saving time and money.
So, if your website is able to meet their needs, solve their problem fast, they will go ahead and buy it, not just one time, but for the longer run.
As a Gift
We live in a digital era; we use our fingers more than our pens to write. Still, a pen is an evergreen gift idea: from young kids who start learning how to grab their first pen, to many successful entrepreneurs that go on to sign multi-million dollars contracts. Pen will always be a timeless gift idea.
If you think of it, you can create a website simply providing pen-gifting ideas. It can be divided into different sections by demographic category, each type including choosing tips and why these pens matter. And through each article, you can link to any other mentioned pen and side products (e.g. ink, notebook, pencil case…etc. to a shopping site via affiliate links).
How? Here are some ideas –
As the target audience is looking for gifts, so, the mention of how the pen can be beneficial to the end-user will become very important.
For passion
One type of audience buys pens online because of the rarity or the given identity value. They can be luxury lovers or simply pen lovers.
They buy pens online because they want to possess them. Most of the time, this type of pen is hardly found in a random regular stationary shop, and in some cases even not available in their country, especially for some special limited-edition pens.
If you are a pen lover, you know what a pen could mean for you. The pure joy from receiving your dream pen delivery and what is the pain if you lose the chance to buy it before another pen lover get the last one in the market.
If collecting pen is your hobby, then, you are the best person to introduce the special pens that your audience would love to pay for. You know what they care and what they need to know. Then, why not turn this passion into a business?
This is what I mean from Passion to Conversion.
You can click on my other site, frompassiontoconversion.com, to learn more about how you can turn your passion into conversion.
But here, I am going to show you how through an online example I found.
Take a look at luxipens.com. In About Us page, we learn who is behind this website really: It’s luxury pen lovers!
The website breaksdown into 5 main sections:
This is a great and simple example in terms of website idea and structure, even though you can discover that there are quite a lot of missing content in the “Pen Recommendations” section, and the annoying pop up to ask visitors to Follow them on their social media. But they are not my focus points.
My point is, with such a good structure website only dedicated to a niche, luxury pens, together with a consistency develop update content, this could be a very profitable and sustainable website. And it all drives from a passion about luxury pen!
So, now if someone asks you, “Is it possible to make money by selling pens online?”
You probably willing to answer right away, “Yes. It is possible.“
As you can see, there are lots of opportunities out there.
Solely selling pens could be very profitable to the point of becoming your second income or even a major one. Either by develop your online shop or be an affiliate marketer. (they will be link to my other resources posts)
The key is to start with a thorough research. To know everything about your potential customers. Who will be your unique audience? What are they looking for online as opposed to what they can find in physical shops? How you can solve their problems. How can you serve them by giving what they need or what they want?
If you have passion on the product type that you are going to stick with even better! Because you have the pure interest to go deeper on the products, you know what the pain and the joy of using it really is. No one knows better than you.
Even if is not your passion or hobby, with an in-depth research and strategic planning, you can still attract your audience to buy products from your online shop or to click on your affiliate links to continue the shopping process.
People buy things with a purpose. Even if sometimes it seems just an impulse, there is always a strong desire to push them to click on the buy button and fill out all the rational payment and shipment details.
If you can pinpoint this to the root of your target audience’s heart, you will be already holding 50% of the key insight to be successful.
I haven’t listed out all the possible reasons and examples why people buy pens online. There are other motivations explaining purchasing behavior that can be explored.
The opportunities are endless.
Time to make a summarize conclusion here.
First, let’s go back to the movie, “Wolf Of Wall Street” for a second.
The story start from a couple of lines,
“I can sell anything.”
“Really? Then, sell me this pen.”
Now, it’s time to ask the question in another way,
“Can you sell this pen?”
“Sure, as I can sell anything.”
What does it mean?
After reading this post you have realized that potentially, there are endless opportunities and ways to sell pens successfully online.
And if you can sell pens, a rather ordinary product online, then you should be able to sell anything.
Check below other great sites for inspiration on selling pens or pen related products to make online profit –
The Well-Appointed Desk – this website is a mixture of meeting the needs for people who are responsible for stylish office supply/ gift to their business partner. One product really grabbed my eyeballs: their “I got shit to do note pad”.
And, at the same time, the website is full of pen lovers information (go to “Link Love” and “Pen Show Schedule”).
Vanness – A family who’s been running pen business for generations. It is a family business, from grandparents to grandsons passionate about pens and very caring about the community they have built along in the past 90 years. They extend their love and profession not just through time, but also through space, from offline to online.
Everyday Carry – It is another impressive website that fully demonstrates how you can re-package seemingly ordinary daily products with interesting and insightful information. The effect: grant every single product strong reasons to be acquired.
Leave us a comment below; share your thoughts about which product you think is harder to sell than a pen. Let’s have some fun and thoughtful brainstorming in the comments section, inspire each other and open up opportunities together!