Telegram Affiliate Marketing 101: A Guide for Beginners
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We keep telling you that you don’t need a website to start affiliate marketing: a landing page is often enough!
Alternatively, you can get the most out of social traffic. And today, we will discuss one of the brand-new traffic sources — a great addition to so familiar YouTube and Instagram.
Without further ado — let’s dive into the world of Telegram!
Disclaimer: Please note that PropellerAds does NOT sell Telegram traffic in any form. We merely explain how affiliate marketers and media buyers use this traffic source to promote their CPA offers.
What is Telegram And Why It’s Worth Trying?
Created as a messenger, Telegram has now grown into a fully-fledged social network. Here are just a couple of things you can do in Telegram besides chatting:
- Job search
- News
- Entertaining posts
- Personal Blogs
- Networking
- Ad Placement
All of this is possible thanks to the three special features of Telegram:
Groups. Public or private group chats, where every member can post a message. Yes, it’s literally the same as WhatsApp or Facebook group chats you are so familiar with.
An example is not far to seek — check out the PropellerAds Telegram Chat
Channels. A public or private group where only an owner or administrator can post messages. Channel subscribers can react or comment on posts if the owner allowed it. Besides texts, channel owners can also post photos, videos, polls, stickers, and launch live streams.
Today, there are thousands of Telegram channels on literally every topic you can think of: from daily news, private blogs, and book recommendations to affiliate marketing, crypto, investments, and iGaming.
Here is an example of one of the top popular movie recommendation channels in India:
Bots. Telegram bot chats that can perform a specific function. For example, there is a special bot that can create a watermark for your affiliate marketing creative: you just send your image to a chat, and a bot sends it back protected from spy tools!
And here are some more bot examples:
- File Converter Bot
- URL Shortener Bot
- Job Search Bots
- Flat Search Bots
- Fitness Training Bots
A Little About Figures: The Most Important Telegram Stats
So, you are now pretty aware of the main Telegram functional. We think it already sheds light on why it’s worth trying!
To sound even more persuasive, we prepared the most important Telegram statistics. Be careful!
Telegram is quickly developing, so the numbers might grow while you are reading this.
Types of Ads in Telegram
Not hard to guess: if a social network has an active audience, you most likely can earn something from it!
And that’s right.
Telegram has two types of ads that you can try to use for your affiliate marketing efforts.
Ad Posts in Telegram Channels
It works like at any other social media: an offer owner or an affiliate marketer comes to a channel owner and makes some agreements about ad placement. It can be some cross-promo or a paid post.
You can find the most suitable channels yourself or make your life a bit easier using Telegram ad exchanges like Telega.io.
Besides, you can post links to offers in Telegram bots. It works actually the same way: you find a bot with an audience potentially interested in your offer, place an ad via a bot owner, and users will receive ad messages in the bot.
Official Telegram Ads
Recently, Telegram launched its own advertising platform called Telegram Ads. Such official ads come as short messages in channels, and they has some obvious pros: for example, convenient statistics, and a placement, always visible to a channel’s reader:
However, you will barely want to try this option as an affiliate marketer, and this is why:
- A minimum deposit for your advertising account at Telegram ads is €3,000. Well, it’s better than before, when this deposit was €2 mln (yes, we are not joking), but still a big amount, especially when you are just testing a new source.
- You are very limited in your ad content: only 160 symbols and a couple of emojis, no lists, no italics, and bold fonts, and no pictures or videos. Less creativity for your ad creatives!
- It’s only possible to promote channels via Telegram Ads. Want to send traffic to a landing page, a pre-lander, or, say, some app? Great, but you can’t do it.
- People using Telegram Premium accounts or a Telegram desktop version don’t see official Telegram Ads.
So, Telegram Ads are the best choice for well-established brands with big advertising budgets, who want to boost their already popular channels.
We are Finally Here: Affiliate Marketing in Telegram
Now it’s obvious that Telegram channels is what you should focus on. But what exactly should you do?
You basically have two options:
- Create your own channel and share affiliate links there. Of course, it will take time, effort, and money before your channel becomes popular enough to monetize it.
- Send traffic to your offers by placing ads on various related Telegram channels. This is what you call affiliate marketing or media buying in a nutshell — and what we consider the best option, especially if you are trying to earn with Telegram for the first time.
- When you feel Telegram is something you have been looking for all your life in affiliate marketing, try to combine both. Work on your own channel, create relationships with the similar ones, and so get the maximum reach for your affiliate marketing offers.
Posting your offer links in groups is not the best idea. If the group is popular enough, your link will soon be buried in the avalanche of new messages from chat members. And, by the way, chances are a chat moderator might ban you for posting links.
Let’s now dive into more details about the methods that work, okay?
Your Own Telegram Channel
Telegram welcomes channels on almost all possible topics. So, if you are keen on a particular vertical, be it eCommerce, Finance, Dating, or anything else except iGaming — go for it!
With a bunch of profitable offers on hand (or a single offer from a particular brand), you can successfully promote it via your own channel.
However, pretty obviously, you need to gain enough subscribers to promote your offers successfully, right? How to collect and retain them and what to do next?
Here is one of the working methods you can try to copy.
1. Choose a popular topic. If you check Telegram channel rankings, you’ll find out that Crypto and Finance channels have the biggest subscriber bases and user engagement. Still, you don’t need to stick to this topic if you don’t want to: every channel has a chance to grow.
Here are some channel ideas based on stats:
- Global or Local News
- Movie Recommendations
- Curious Facts and Lifehacks
- Memes
- Job Listings
2. Don’t forget about SEO. It’s not actually SEO in its regular sense — but you should add some keywords to your channel name or link, like here:
3. Provide users with regular unique content. And get the most out of Telegram features to engage subscribers! Your posts can contain pictures, videos, emojis, gifs, and stickers. Besides, you can enable comments and reactions for better user engagement:
By the way, you don’t need to post much of the content before you start promoting the channel.
Paul Molyanov, the owner of a content marketing agency: it’s enough to set a channel photo, and description, create about 5-7 engaging posts — and you are ready to go.
4. Promote your channel. You can do it using other Telegram channels on related topics, Telegram ads, or other social networks.
Fun fact: creating your own sticker pack can also work out. For example, this cutie called a ‘Sad Millenial’ gave a serious boost to Seedly, a financial company from Singapore:
You can also try promoting your Telegram channel via an ad network: this is what PropellerAds users sometimes do.
However, not everyone feels it is worth it: for example, here is what one of our advertisers thinks:
In my opinion, it could be too expensive: I suppose not many push subscribers use Telegram, so I prefer promoting offers outside Telegram, using ad networks.
5. Place affiliate marketing offers in your channel. Create attractive posts that will be relevant to your audience’s interests and add direct links to offers.
Ad Placement in Other Channels
This looks way more like affiliate marketing: you find the best channels for your offers and purchase placements for the ads.
Sounds easy enough, but still requires some serious preparation.
Like the previous time, let’s look at the most popular and efficient workflow:
- Find the right channels. Of course, your ad post should be placed at a relevant channel: it hardly makes sense to promote a Dating offer at, say, a Kids’ Apparel showcase.
Besides a manual channel search, you can try looking through Telegram channel catalogs (like ‘Top-X Telegram Channels on Marketing’) or check out exchanges that allow sorting channels by topics.
- Make sure the channels have real engagement. The thing is that Telegram doesn’t prohibit fake subscribers and even impressions or comments. So, without much experience, it’s easy to come across a seemingly popular channel full of bots in reality.
How to tell real engagement from fake? It can be evident if a channel has, say, 20k subscribers and only a couple of impressions on each post. But channel owners can purchase fake impressions, too!
So, the reality is that you can’t always make sure the channel is active and will bring real users to your ad.
Paul Molyanov: ad placement prices might be a hint here. If you see a seemingly popular channel with many active subscribers, but an ad post is suspiciously cheap, think twice before cooperating with it.
However, to use this advice, you need to know the average ad pricing, right?
- Check the price. Ad placement prices might vary depending on how popular the channel is, its topic, and for how long your ad will stay published.
The most standard placement option is a single ad visible for 24 hours. A channel owner can also pin it for better visibility.
Such a 24 hours-post in a channel with 8-15k subscribers might cost from $100 to $400 in the Finance niche. At the same time, a cooking channel owner with about 8k subscribers can charge you only $10 or so.
The best option is to monitor various offers at Telegram exchanges — this way, you will understand the average price for your niche depending on the subscribers’ number.
- Prepare a post. In most cases, you create ad posts yourself — so make sure they are catchy, native, and short enough to attract attention. For example, this one seems a bit dragged on:
5. Track conversions from your post. You can do it using UTM marks in your offer links.
Telegram Dos And Don’ts
One of the best pros of Telegram is that it has really few restrictions compared to other social networks. So, if you purchase placement at some channel, you are limited by local channel rules and just a couple of official guidelines as follows:
- No spam and scam
- No violence in public groups and chats
- No illegal adult content in public groups and chats
Official Telegram Ads have more restrictions – so if you want to try them, too, read the full terms here. The most important ones are:
- No profanity and vulgar language, even misspelled or masked;
- No excessive letter capitalization or emoji use;
- No misleading – your ad text must coincide with the link content
- No shocking or adult content
- No iGaming and financial products that can be harmful
- No medical services or products that are not certified
- No spam software, illegal services, and products
To Sum Up: Telegram Pros and Cons
Telegram seems a very profitable place — but let’s stay unbiased and name both pros and cons.
Telegram Affiliate Marketing Pros
Telegram is popular. Its audience is not as big as, say, on Instagram or YouTube, but it’s constantly growing.
Users are engaged. They can’t just scroll through their feed without focusing on content much as many do at Tik Tok or Instagram. Instead, they open a channel if they are really interested and read all the recent posts.
A limited number of ads. Users don’t see ads everywhere in Telegram: they can only come across them when they scroll a channel. So, they usually have more trust in these ads and don’t get annoyed with them.
Mild rules. There are almost no restrictions regarding ads, creatives, and channel topics unless you use official Telegram Ads.
Telegram Affiliate Marketing Cons
Fake engagement. Telegram doesn’t ban or somehow restrict accounts with bot users and fake impressions. As an affiliate marketer, you must be savvy enough to tell a worthy channel from a trash one.
No targeting. The only possible targeting options are the channel topic, language, and sometimes GEO.
Mainly mobile traffic. Although Telegram has a pretty convenient desktop version, most users come from mobile devices.
Trying something new is always fun! However, it’s risky enough.
Don’t want to risk? Stick to a proven traffic source — we always welcome you at PropellerAds to provide you with real relevant users.
