How to Make Money With a Telegram Channel

How to make money with a Telegram channel

You can make money with a Telegram channel through Telegram’s own features, which are ad revenue sharing, paid posts, Star reactions, Star subscriptions, and suggested posts, and through income you arrange yourself: sponsored posts, affiliate links, your own products, and a rewards program on a companion website. Telegram’s tools pay out in Stars or in Gram, the TON blockchain’s coin (called Toncoin until June 2026), and withdrawals go through Fragment. The channels that earn most usually run two or three of these at once.

Telegram ad revenue sharing

Telegram sells sponsored messages that appear in public channels. When it launched revenue sharing in March 2024, Telegram’s announcement said owners of public channels with at least 1,000 subscribers receive 50% of the revenue from ads shown in their channels, paid in Toncoin (now Gram) and withdrawn through Fragment. You find it under Channel Settings, Statistics, Monetization. The current Terms of Service for Content Creators still describe a 50% share of the revenue Telegram earns from valid impressions in eligible channels, and say the share can change at any time.

The key word is valid. The same terms let Telegram deduct rewards for invalid activity, including impressions and activity solicited through false representation, monetary purchase, or explicit requests to interact with sponsored messages, and spam, automation, or fake impressions. Telegram can deduct up to the full balance, offset future rewards if invalid activity is found after a withdrawal, and remove the channel from the program. Never ask readers to click the ads, and never buy views or subscribers for a monetized channel.

Paid posts, Star reactions, and Star subscriptions

Stars are Telegram’s in-app currency. Readers buy them in the app and spend them in your channel in three ways:

• Paid posts. You post photos or videos that readers pay Stars to view. The creator terms say owners receive the equivalent of 0.013 USD in rewards for each Star earned with paid posts.
• Star reactions. Readers tip a post by reacting with Stars. Telegram’s announcement says channel owners receive 100% of the Stars sent this way.
• Star subscriptions. You create an invite link with a monthly fee in Stars, so people pay to join and stay in the channel. Telegram’s API documentation says the only subscription period is 30 days.

Earned Stars can be withdrawn as Gram through Fragment once the balance reaches Telegram’s minimum, and the withdrawal needs the owner’s two-step verification password. You can also spend Stars on Telegram Ads for the same channel; Telegram’s terms value each Star at 0.02 USD of advertising credit there.

Suggested posts and direct sponsorships

Suggested posts, added in July 2025, let readers and brands offer your channel a post together with a payment in Stars or Toncoin (now Gram). You can accept, ask for edits, or change the price, then publish it. According to Telegram’s announcement, you receive the payment 24 hours after posting, and if you delete the post earlier the buyer gets the full amount back. It is the safest way to sell a post to someone you do not know, because Telegram holds the money.

Many channels also sell sponsored posts directly. Price them on views, not subscribers: advertisers compare what they pay per 1,000 views across channels. Mark each sponsored post clearly and decline anything you would not recommend to a friend, because one scam ad costs more trust than it pays.

Affiliate links and your own products

If your readers ask what to buy, a disclosed affiliate link earns a commission on each sale. Deals, gadgets, courses, and travel channels do well here. Selling your own product, whether a guide, a template, or a course, usually pays more per reader than any of the other methods, because you keep the whole margin. Digital goods sold inside a Telegram bot must be paid in Stars, according to Telegram’s bot developer terms, so plan your checkout before you build one.

A rewards program with an offerwall

Gaming, crypto-curious, and “earn online” audiences often want a way to earn points they can spend on something. An offerwall gives them that: readers complete offers such as trying an app or reaching a level in a game, advertisers pay per completed offer, and you pass part of the payout to the reader as points. What is an offerwall? explains the model.

A Telegram channel cannot host an offerwall by itself, so the setup has three parts:

1. A website where readers sign in, with an account ID of your own and a points balance stored on your server.
2. An earn page on that site that opens the offerwall with a link your server signs for the signed-in user.
3. A server that credits points when the offerwall sends a postback, and takes them back when a result is reversed.

Your channel then promotes the earn page like any other post: what readers can earn, what points buy, how long credits can take. How to start a rewards website covers payouts and fraud, and How much can you earn with an offerwall? gives the formulas. The free offerwall earnings calculator turns your reader numbers into an estimate.

Two rules come from the offerwall side. Sharklio’s terms require end users to be at least 16, so ask for age at sign-up on your site. They also forbid incentivized clicking outside the offerwall and misleading promotion, so link to your earn page rather than posting single offers with inflated promises. The traffic quality rules list the rest.

Which methods to combine

Mix one Telegram-native income with one you control. A news channel with 30,000 readers might take the ad share and sell a sponsored post a week. A gaming channel might run paid posts for exclusive guides and a rewards program on its site. A niche expert channel might charge a Star subscription for a private channel and sell a course. The more your income depends on a single program, the more a rule change can hurt it.

All of it starts with readers who open your posts. If you are still building that audience, read How to get Telegram channel subscribers. For more ways to earn beyond Telegram, see AdSense alternatives and How to monetize a Discord server.

Frequently asked questions