5 ways to make money on your Telegram channel

Let's talk about a few ways to make money in Telegram if you're just about to create a channel, and about the disadvantages of different advertising.

Today, Telegram remains one of the most expensive social networks for advertising: a post in a relatively small by the standards of other platforms channel with 50,000 subscribers can cost more than 15,000 rubles, and sometimes the price tag can exceed a hundred thousand.

How much can you earn from your Telegram channel

Perhaps, the amount of earnings is one of the main pains of novice creators of Telegram channels. The thing is that today the entry threshold into this "media business" is quite high.

"In theory, you can get the first 5-10 thousand for free, but this requires: topicality of the channel (politics, business, mass media, education, etc.), interesting content, preferably authorial and plenty of time to find channels for mutual PR. With 10 thousand, you can already count on a normal coverage of posts that would be of interest to potential advertisers. With such a number of subscribers, you can also interact with the owners of other channels for money, here already the cost of advertising your channel depends on the subject and the number of subscribers.

It's considered that 10 rubles per subscriber is cheap, but the quality of subscribers may be such that you don't have to count on their coverage.

With good channels, the price rises to 40-50 rubles per person. You can cooperate with promotion agencies, and then the price may vary between 20-30 rubles. You can conclude that the average cost of a subscriber is in the region of 20-35 rubles, and to be guided by this amount when planning the budget", says the owner of a network of Telegram channels, who was interviewed by TexTerra.

According to him, one should not expect prompt profit from Telegram channels today: in order to earn 100 thousand rubles per month from your channel or channels, you need to invest about a million rubles in their development and promotion.

The owner of another network of Telegram channels with a total audience of 270,000 people (Grigory Mastrider) said in 2018 that he could earn more than 500,000 rubles a month from his channels and his revenue is usually "less than a million." In 2020, in an interview, the blogger called the figure of two million rubles per month. But it is worth noting that this is not only earnings on Telegram, but also on the YouTube channels "Mastridy" and "Book Person", as well as on the podcast "Terminal Reading". Today, the audience for all of Mastrider's channels and communities is nearly 500,000 people. For such an audience, and in fact it is half the size of the most popular "VKontakte" communities, 2 million rubles per month is an excellent profit. However, the blogger does not say how much money he spent on promoting his channels.

Step 1: Creating a Telegram Channel

Before creating a channel, it is worth thinking through several important points (if you already have a Telegram channel and want to know how you can make money from it, we advise you to go to the third step).

The most important thing is the subject. Today, there are more than 150 thousand Russian-language channels in the social network, created by Pavel Durov. Most likely, Telegram already has a channel for your topic, unless, of course, it is quite narrow. For example, "making paintings out of eggshells". Of course, with such a channel you will be a rare expert, but will you be read by at least a thousand people? If you have difficulty answering the question, it is better to discard such a narrow subject or expand it.

When you have decided on the topic, think about the author's style. Telegram feeds are blogs where the authors express their personal opinions. Often users subscribe to the channel because of the useful information, and stay - because of the personality of the blogger, which attracts them.

Try to plan the style of posts so as to evoke emotions in users (preferably positive ones, of course, but remember that you can't please everyone).

The next step is to think about the name of the channel and its design. Here you are almost unlimited, but it is important to remember two things.

First: on the screen of a mobile device, the user sees about 20-22 characters in a line. Therefore, it is advisable that the name of your channel fall within this range.

Second: In Telegram, channel icons are rounded and fairly small, so choose your logo so that all of its important details are visible on a 40x40 pixels icon.

Now we get to the channel description. Here it is necessary to specify the contacts for communication and advertising - you are going to monetize your brainchild.

When the channel has been created and the link to it has been sent to your friends, it's time to move on to the second step, development.

Step 2: Developing your Telegram channel

To start earning money from your channel, you need to develop it and make it attractive to future advertisers. There are many methods for this, but the simplest and most popular at first is placing in directories of channels and buying posts in already developed channels on your topic.

To place yourself in a channel, you need to write to its administrator. To do this, first search for the appropriate directory through the search bar - enter "directory" or "channels" and choose those with the largest number of subscribers (like this or that). The description always has the contacts of the administrator, who you can write to and find out the price and other details of placement.

If this is an expert channel, for example, about investments, it is important to confirm your expertise in the advertising post at once, in order to arouse the user's trust already at this stage. The image should also be relevant to the channel, with its logo, catchy but not irritating. Try to put yourself in the user's place: would he want to follow a link in such an announcement?

Placing in directories can bring you the first audience, but to gain CA best helps buy paid posts in other channels on a similar theme to yours. It's better to buy ads in the profile channels when the number of your subscribers is over 5000. Collect the first 5 thousand may be difficult if you have a narrow subject, but to do so, having placed in several directories, is quite realistic, especially since the number of messenger users is growing rapidly.

Now the question arises: "Well, when to make money? You can already think seriously about monetization with a couple of thousand subscribers - if your channel is designed for an active but narrow audience. If there are a lot of competitor channels in the social network and you see that they have more subscribers, it is better to wait and develop the channel to their level, gaining 30 thousand or more subscribers and a good coverage of posts.

Step 3: Monetizing your Telegram channel

There are several options for monetizing your Telegram channel, but most of them involve advertising. However, there are also more interesting and non-obvious options.

The usual promotional post

You've seen those weird, annoying ad posts in communities on social networks. It seems that users have already developed a "banner blindness" to them. However, many advertisers are still willing to pay good money to place such ads in channels and communities.

It is important to understand that in this case, you risk users' loyalty (which is difficult to obtain and easy to lose in Telegram), but you get money in return. The choice is yours, but hopefully you will not be offered such posts.

Pros: easy implementation; minimum effort; understandable for advertisers.

Cons: reduced user loyalty, low CTR, low cost of placement.

Today, a significant part of advertisers have caught on to the specifics of Telegram and offer to make native ads. Now it's just about her.

Native advertising post
Native ads are ads disguised as regular channel posts. Some channel owners don't mark it as an ad at all, while others put a mention at the end that it's an affiliate or promotional post. Usually, advertisers don't like to put the word "advertisement" in a prominent place. However, in order to be ethical with users and not make them guess where an ordinary post and where advertising is, it is better to come up with a short signal phrase that immediately allows you to distinguish advertising, and insert it in the right post.

Because of this format, native ads are usually more expensive than regular ads and, more often, the channel owner himself writes the text, which allows you to preserve the author's style and the trust of subscribers. It is difficult to calculate the price of such a post - it may depend on the frequency of posting and audience, as well as on the topic of the channel. On average, Telegram bloggers recommend calculating the price based on the number of subscribers and taking 40-50 kopecks per subscriber. A more objective metric may be the average coverage of the post, but then, of course, the cost of advertising will be lower.

But who will want to place ads in your channel and how to find this person? For this, there are special services that "bring" advertisers with channel owners. For example, the service telega.in, where you can place information about your channel or choose an existing order for placement on the exchange. However, be careful and look carefully at the information about such services - when withdrawing funds you may be deceived and you will not receive money from advertisers. More often bloggers recommend communicating directly with customers and receive money from them immediately into the account - it's quieter.

Pros: the audience remains loyal; the effectiveness of the ads is higher; the average price tag is higher.

Cons: requires additional effort, creativity, and possibly a sales manager; not all advertisers are willing to try this format.

Permanent Sponsor

One of the not-so-obvious options is to find a permanent sponsor for your channel. For example, if you have a channel about home appliances, you can invite a popular online store or brand of appliances to cooperate. Good channels do not refuse sponsorship on a regular basis. The only question is the terms of such a partnership - the frequency of posting, coverage of certain topics, a "block on the negative" and, of course, payment.

Pros: regular payment, no time costs for finding advertisers.

Cons: the inability to grow income; dependence on the sponsor; possible "negative block".

Paid participation

The possibility to create paid channels in Telegram appeared recently. The subscription model, when a user pays money for access to content, is not new. However, it has recently become increasingly popular due to the decline in the effectiveness of conventional advertising. Revenues from major media outlets and small blogs are falling due to declining rates on advertising banners, but a paid subscription can bring in a good income without having to constantly chase traffic and reach.

Paid subscriptions, or so-called PayWall, appeared on the social network in April 2021. This monetization model is best suited for expert channels where the content is an exclusive created by the author based on his own knowledge and/or insider information. Users are willing to pay for this.

You can make a channel paid from day one of its existence and later, when it gathers readers, by dividing the free and paid channels by the type of content and periodically inviting subscribers of the free channel to join the paid channel. There will be more detailed content and bonuses, including the ability to communicate with the channel's author. In the settings, specify that the channel is private, and only those who have paid to participate can join.

Then, go to the PayWall service and click "Connect PayWall". Sign in via Telegram and get into the service control panel. Here, you can set up a landing page for the user to subscribe to your private channel. In the branding, it is important to describe the subject matter and the value of your channel's content, and indicate the rates (in case you want to create a separate chat room where you will communicate with your subscribers) and contacts. All this can be done and set up yourself, but it is better to involve professional designers and digital specialists: subscription is the most complicated, but also the most stable and interesting way to earn from your Telegram channel.

Pros: regular income from subscriptions; possibility of unlimited income growth; possibility to combine the approach with advertising posts; high audience loyalty.

Cons: a lot of effort and financial costs to convert readers into paid subscribers; the need to create unique and useful content for which users will be willing to pay.

Selling a channel

Today there are many telegram channels on the exchange, which were grown "for slaughter" (sorry, for sale). Many of them were created by trivial subscriber recruitment, and usually they do not have a high coverage of posts. Thus, according to the owner of a network of telegram channels with 40,000 subscribers, a good coverage of posts is 25% or more of the number of subscribers. That is, if you have 50,000 subscribers on your channel, each post must gather at least 12,000 reach. Due to the specifics of Telegram, where people often do not read their channels very often, the real coverage of the posts is worth looking at publications that are approximately 1 to 3 months old - it will be more reliable.

But in reality, channels turn out, for the most part, to be filled with bots or offerers (people who subscribed to the channel for a fee), who quickly unsubscribe from it when their task is done.

The payback period for Telegram channels today, according to experts, depends on the topic and could be several years. But after reaching the payback period, your brainchild will bring you a steadily growing income. If the creator of the channel is impatient, he will try to sell it and make money on it. But here there is a great risk that your channel will be willing to pay much less than you have invested in it.

Pros: fast profits.

Cons: risk that the channel will not want to buy; depriving yourself of income in the long run.