DM marketing on Telegram and the Telegram affiliate program: what each route allows, with its rule

By Mara Vogel Published 15 October 2026 22 min read

Two searches meet on this page. People who type dm marketing want to sell through private messages, and many of them have been offered a Telegram tool that promises thousands of DMs a day. People who type telegram affiliate program want a commission for sending buyers somewhere. On Telegram the two overlap at one sentence in the affiliate terms, which forbid "initiating private chats with random users for the sole purpose of sharing your link".

Every Telegram figure below comes from a Telegram page read on 15 October 2026 and named beside the figure, under the sourcing standard behind these guides. Where Telegram publishes nothing, the guide says so instead of borrowing a vendor's number. Sendhaus, an independent Telegram messaging studio, has no affiliation with Telegram Messenger Inc.

What is DM marketing, and what does it mean on Telegram?

DM marketing is selling, support or follow-up carried out in private one-to-one messages instead of public posts. Direct message marketing on Telegram is narrower than on Instagram or X, because Telegram separates three senders: a personal account, a bot and a business account. Each sender has its own rule about whom it may write to first, and that rule decides whether a DM marketing campaign is allowed.

Direct messaging marketing works on any platform for the same reason: a private message lands where the reader looks. Telegram adds the reason it fails. The Spam FAQ judges a private message by the recipient's reaction, not by its content.

"For private messages, it really doesn't matter what you send, as long as the receivers find it unwelcome. It could have been a photo, an invite link or a simple 'hello'."Telegram Spam FAQ, telegram.org/faq_spam

Marketing on Telegram therefore splits into messages people asked for and messages they did not. The first kind covers replies to a customer who wrote in, a bot conversation the user started, and channel posts sent to subscribers. The second kind is the cold DM, and the account that sends it carries the risk. The mechanics of how a direct message goes out from a signed-in account are the same in both cases; only the recipient's consent differs.

The business row is the one most DM guides miss. Telegram Business, part of Premium since 31 March 2024, lets a seller set automatic replies for people who write in; the account type is covered in Telegram Business features for sellers. A business account still follows the personal-account rule when it writes first.

DM marketing strategy: opt-in conversations versus cold DMs

A DM marketing strategy on Telegram starts with one decision: who writes first. When the customer writes first, starts a bot or subscribes to a channel, every later message is a reply inside a relationship Telegram's rules expect. When the sender writes first to a stranger, the campaign runs on a personal account against the Spam FAQ, and that account absorbs every report the campaign earns.

The opt-in side of DM marketing has more reach than most guides admit. A bot can message anyone who pressed Start, at a pace the Bots FAQ gives as about 30 messages per second for bulk notifications, and a bot that qualifies can buy paid broadcasts of up to 1000 messages per second at 0.1 Stars per message. The Bots FAQ sets the bar for paid broadcasts at 100,000 Stars on balance and 100,000 monthly active users. The routes are compared in six supported routes for bulk messages, and the pacing in flood waits and Telegram's sending limits.

The cold side of DM marketing is sold as DM automation: a userbot signed in to a personal account, a list of usernames and a message queue. Telegram's Spam FAQ answers the premise in one line: "Telegram's username search is not a tool for making new friends." An account reported for unsolicited messages can end up able to write only to mutual contacts, the state described in the mutual-contacts-only restriction. Telegram publishes no number of DMs to strangers that is safe to send.

1. Give people a reason to write first

   A channel post, a profile link or an ad can carry a bot link. Telegram's Bot Features page says a deep link's start parameter can be "up to 64 characters long", so each campaign can carry its own code and the bot knows which post brought the reader.

2. Answer fast when they do

   Greeting and away messages cover the hours nobody is at the keyboard. The settings and their limits are listed in every auto-reply option and its documented limit.

3. Move repeat questions into a bot

   A bot answers prices, order status and bookings for everyone who started it, and it can follow up with those users later. Building one is the work described under bot development and automation.

4. Keep announcements in the channel

   One channel post reaches every subscriber without a single private message. Posts can be queued ahead with scheduling channel posts, and a send to a bot's opted-in users can be handed off as a managed broadcast to opted-in subscribers.

5. Measure by source

   Telegram's statistics API gives channel admins a new_members_by_source_graph, and the deep-link codes above give the bot side. Both are covered in reading which source brought new subscribers.

What is the Telegram affiliate program?

What is telegram affiliate program? The Telegram affiliate program is a native feature, announced on 4 December 2024, that lets the owner of a bot or Mini App pay a commission in Telegram Stars to whoever referred a buyer. Channel owners, ordinary users and other bots join a program, get a referral link, and receive a share of the Stars each referred user spends inside that bot.

Telegram's Terms of Service for Affiliate Programs call the bot owner the Program Creator and everyone who shares a link an Affiliate. The commission is set as a permille, a share per thousand: core.telegram.org describes commission_permille as "the share of Telegram Stars received by affiliates for every transaction made by users they referred". The commission period, set in months, can be left open, in which case "there is no expiration date".

The telegram affiliate program pays only on purchases made in Stars inside the bot or Mini App. A sale on an outside website, a card payment to a shop or a subscription paid off Telegram earns nothing through it. That is the first difference from Amazon or CPA programmes, and it narrows the telegram affiliate route to digital goods sold inside Telegram.

An affiliate program on telegram is therefore a contract between the bot owner and the people who promote the bot, with Telegram holding the ledger. Telegram's terms add that the arrangement creates no "agency, partnership, employment, endorsement" with Telegram, and forbid affiliates from presenting themselves as anything other than an independent third party.

How to start affiliate marketing on Telegram with the native program

How to start affiliate marketing on Telegram with the native program: find a bot with an active program, choose which of your own chats will hold the referral link, and post that link where your readers already are. The link can belong to your personal account, a bot you own or a channel you own. Commissions arrive in that peer's Star balance after a referred user pays inside the bot.

1. Pick a program

   For the Telegram affiliate program, the API returns a list of suggested programs, sorted by revenue or by date. Each entry shows the commission, the duration and a daily_revenue_per_user estimate; core.telegram.org gives expected earnings as daily_revenue_per_user * commission_permille / 1000 Stars per day per referred user.

2. Choose the peer that holds the link

   The API names three options: "The current user", "A bot we own", or "A channel we own", the last limited to channels where you can post. A telegram channel affiliate program link sits on the channel; a telegram affiliate bot is a bot you own connected as the peer.

3. Post the link where people chose to read

   A pinned post, a review or a how-to in your own channel is the setting the terms have in mind. Getting readers to that channel first is covered in free and paid promotion routes for a channel.

4. Disclose the relationship

   The terms make affiliates "solely responsible" for local law, "including but not limited to instances where you may be required to disclose all relevant affiliate marketing relationships when posting your affiliate links".

5. Wait out the hold

   Earned Stars stay locked for 21 days. A refund of the referred purchase during or after that window can be taken back from the balance.

How to do affiliate marketing on Telegram without a channel: the personal account can be the affiliate peer, so a single user can hold a link. The same terms bar that account from opening private chats with strangers to share it, so a link held by a personal account travels only as far as the account's existing conversations and profile.

How to use Telegram for affiliate marketing through a bot: connect a bot you own as the peer, and the bot shares its referral link with people who already started it. A telegram bot for affiliate marketing that answers a real question first (a price check, a recommendation, a lookup) and then offers the link is the pattern the rules allow. An affiliate marketing telegram bot that messages strangers cannot exist on the Bot API, because bots cannot start conversations.

What the Telegram affiliate program terms forbid

The Telegram affiliate program terms list four prohibited activities for affiliates, and the fourth is DM marketing to strangers. The list covers spamming or flooding chats with the link, posting it beside content that breaks the Terms of Service, inflating engagement by hand or by automation, and starting private chats with random users only to share the link. Penalties reach the channel, bot or account.

"(iv) initiating private chats with random users for the sole purpose of sharing your link."Telegram Terms of Service for Affiliate Programs, section 3.2

Telegram also reserves the right "to rescind, withhold, or reclaim any future, pending or disbursed commissions accrued from such activities". A commission earned through a cold DM campaign can therefore be clawed back after it was paid, on top of any limit on the account. Affiliate marketing through telegram that relies on private messages to strangers loses twice.

Program Creators in the Telegram affiliate program carry a rule of their own: "Attempts to redirect users to a separate TPA, chat or platform for the purpose of finalizing purchases to circumvent commissions is expressly forbidden." A bot owner who sends referred buyers to an outside checkout breaks the creator side of the agreement, and the terms name termination of the bot and the account as possible results.

Affiliate marketing with telegram also meets the inflation clause. Panels that sell members, views or reactions, described in SMM panels selling members and views and bought subscribers, real versus fake, produce exactly the "artificially inflating engagement or interaction metrics" the terms prohibit.

Affiliate marketing on Telegram with outside programs: Amazon, CPA and courses

Affiliate marketing on Telegram with outside programs means posting links from Amazon Associates, CPA networks or course platforms in a channel or group, outside the Telegram affiliate program. Telegram takes no commission on those links and sets no affiliate rules for them, so two rulebooks apply: the network's own agreement, and Telegram's Terms of Service and Spam FAQ for how the link is delivered.

Amazon affiliate marketing on Telegram is the common case, and Amazon's Associates Program Policies address direct messages by name.

"You may include Special Links in emails, SMS and direct messaging from your social media Sites; provided, that such communications are solicited (i.e., opted into by the receiving customer)."Amazon Associates Program Policies, affiliate-program.amazon.com

The same policies bar Amazon trademarks, or misspellings of them, "in any username, group name, or other identifier on any social networking site". An amazon affiliate telegram bot or deals channel named after Amazon breaks that clause before it sends a single link. Automation recipes that copy deals from another person's channel and swap in your own tag republish someone else's posts, which adds a copyright question to the Associates one.

Telegram cpa marketing works the same way. A CPA offer pays per action, such as a signup, an install or a deposit, and networks usually state which traffic sources an offer accepts; this guide has not reviewed any single network's terms, so the offer page is the place to check. Offers promising a guaranteed return cannot run through Telegram Ads at all: ad guideline 5.7 bars get-rich-quick schemes and "investment with guaranteed return", a rule set beside others in what Telegram documents about crypto groups and bots.

Telegram channel affiliate marketing and telegram group affiliate marketing differ in who posts. A channel is one-to-many, so the owner controls every link and the disclosure beside it. A group lets members post, so a telegram group for affiliate marketing needs rules about who may share links. Most affiliate marketing groups on telegram that exist to swap links are promotion groups under another name, and the Spam FAQ says moderators are only "more lenient" in groups: people who post spam or unsolicited ads there are still limited.

Disclosure is the same in every version. The FTC's Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR Part 255, state: "The influencer and the advertiser may also be liable if the influencer fails to disclose clearly and conspicuously being paid". A plain "affiliate link" label in the post is the usual way channels meet it; other countries set their own rules. Telegram affiliate marketing with outside programs follows the network and the law, and Telegram's rules govern only the delivery.

How to use Telegram for marketing: channels, groups and bots

How to use Telegram for marketing: publish in a channel people subscribe to, hold conversation in a group, and put repeatable tasks in a bot. A telegram marketing strategy built on those three keeps every message inside something the reader joined. Telegram Ads and paid posts in other channels bring new readers to the channel, and DM marketing shrinks to replies to readers who wrote in.

How to do telegram marketing in practice comes down to order. The channel comes first, with a profile image, a description and recent posts: Telegram's ad guidelines require a promoted channel to have "both a profile image and a complete text" in its description and "at least one post published within the two weeks prior to review". Readers apply a similar test. The channel then gets readers through how Telegram Ads work, priced in the published Telegram Ads cost figures.

Telegram groups for marketing work as support desks and communities, not as lists to message. Marketing in telegram groups owned by someone else means asking the admin for a permitted post. Adding people to your own group follows each person's privacy settings; the routes and limits for adding members sets them out, and what an invite member bot actually does covers the bots sold for the job.

Telegram influencer marketing is the paid post in someone else's channel. Telegram's Terms of Service allow it and keep it outside Telegram's own ad system: admins "may publish their own content featuring third-party promotions or sponsorships. These ads are not part of the Telegram advertisement platform". The buyer negotiates with the admin directly, the disclosure rule above applies, and what a Telegram ads agency sells covers buying through a middleman.

Telegram marketing tips worth keeping have a mechanism behind them. Three telegram marketing examples, described generically and labelled as illustrative rather than client cases: a shop channel posts a weekly drop and links a bot that takes orders; a software vendor runs a support group of a few hundred users with Aggressive Anti-Spam switched on; a newsletter writer runs a channel and joins a bot's affiliate program for a tool readers already buy. Using telegram for marketing this way gives real telegram marketing numbers: subscribers who chose to subscribe and replies from people who wrote first.

Telegram digital marketing sits beside email and search rather than replacing them. Marketing with telegram adds a channel and a bot to a funnel that already exists; email stays the place for people who opted in elsewhere. How a channel or group grows subscribers covers the growth side in detail.

Telegram marketing tools and software: what each one signs in as

A telegram marketing tool is safe or risky depending on what it signs in as. Tools that run as a bot through the Bot API, or as a channel admin, inherit Telegram's bot rules and cannot message strangers. Tools that ask for a phone number and a login code run as a personal account through the MTProto API, and anything they send counts as that person's private messages.

Listings for best telegram marketing software often bundle every row under one name. A product headed "telegram marketing tools-scraper/extract/add/search/invite member" is selling the bottom rows: collecting members from other groups, adding them elsewhere and messaging them. The pages on what a Telegram scraper collects and the rule against it, message sender tools, sorted by what signs in and mass report bots take each one apart. Telegram's page on obtaining an API ID warns that accounts misusing the API this way are "banned forever".

Free telegram marketing tools exist on the compliant side: Telegram's own message scheduler, channel statistics and @BotFather for creating a bot cost nothing. Searches for telegram marketing software free usually land on trials of userbot tools instead, and the cost of those is paid by the account they run on.

A telegram marketing platform sold as an all-in-one dashboard, and products named in the style of telegram marketing pro, deserve the same first question: does the tool ask for a bot token or for a phone number? A telegram marketing bot that holds a bot token is bound by the Bot API, which is why telegram bot marketing through a bot the business owns is the version Telegram's documents describe. Telegram marketing tools that want a phone number are user-account tools whatever the dashboard calls them.

AI marketing telegram tools add text generation to the same choice. Telegram has been adding AI features itself: the 14 July 2026 update introduced a rich text editor "to format and generate text", and the 11 June 2026 update let groups "Add AI guardians to screen people before they join". A model that writes the message does not change who sends it, so AI-assisted DM marketing follows the sender rules above, and an AI-written cold DM is still a cold DM.

DM marketing services and agencies: what is being sold

DM marketing services sold for Telegram fall into two groups. The first manages conversations people started: inbox staffing, bot replies, business-account setup and broadcasts to opted-in subscribers. The second sends cold messages from accounts the agency controls, usually priced per thousand DMs. A dm marketing agency rarely says which group it belongs to, so the contract has to say it for them.

Three questions sort a DM marketing offer quickly. Who sends the messages, a bot token or a pool of phone numbers? Where did the list come from? What happens to the campaign when an account is limited? An offer priced per thousand DMs to "targeted users" is describing a scraped list and the bought or aged accounts behind such campaigns, whatever the sales page calls it.

Telegram marketing services on the compliant side look like Telegram marketing and channel growth work and broadcast messaging to subscribers: the audience is built through ads, promotion and content, and the messages go to people who joined.

DM Pharma, DM Lair and other searches that share the letters

Two searches that reach this topic are about something else. DM Pharma Marketing Pvt Ltd is a company name ("Pvt Ltd" marks a private limited company), and people searching for it want that company rather than private-message marketing. Searches for dm lair campaign creation refer to campaign setup inside a separately branded product. This guide has not reviewed either one, so their official sites are the place to look.

"DM" on its own also covers direct mail, the postal form of DM marketing. Direct mail follows postal and data-protection rules, and nothing on this page about Telegram applies to it.

When DM marketing on Telegram does not work

DM marketing on Telegram does not work when the audience is not on Telegram, when every message needs a personal reply the seller cannot give at scale, or when the reader's country requires consent first. Telegram's reach is uneven by country, a channel is one-way by design, and regulated products face advertising rules that no Telegram setting changes.

Telegram's privacy policy describes "more than 1 billion users", but that total says nothing about a given market. A campaign aimed at a country where customers live on WhatsApp or iMessage reaches few of them, however good the channel. A channel also cannot hold a conversation: replies need a group, a bot or a business inbox, as set out in the four broadcast routes and their published limits.

The layer above Telegram's rules is consent law. Article 13 of the EU ePrivacy Directive, 2002/58/EC, requires prior consent for direct marketing by electronic mail, a term the directive defines broadly as stored text, voice, sound or image messages; whether a given messenger campaign falls inside it is a question for counsel. This is not legal advice. Regulated verticals such as finance, health and gambling add rules of their own.

An account reported for cold DM marketing cannot fix the problem with more accounts. The limit that follows reported cold DMs applies per account, and the spare accounts sold to get around it are part of what is explained in how spam bots are built and stopped.

What Telegram does not publish about DMs and affiliate commissions

Telegram publishes the affiliate mechanics and the bot limits, and withholds the rest. The pages read for this guide give no number of private messages to strangers that is safe, no schedule for how long a restriction lasts, no criteria for approving an affiliate program, and no live commission range beyond a sample configuration. Vendor figures for any of these, including the DM marketing limits sold with userbot tools, are guesses presented as data.

PEER_FLOOD, the error that userbot tools report when an account has messaged too many strangers, is absent from Telegram's official error documentation. The "safe daily limits" sold with those tools come from the vendors, not from Telegram.

The Telegram affiliate program terms say availability can change "at any time" without notice, compensation or explanation, and the starref_program_allowed setting lets Telegram switch the creator option off for a client. A commission rate copied onto a third-party list may no longer match what the app shows.

Telegram publishes no click-through or conversion figures for referral links and no average affiliate earnings. The only earnings number in the documentation is the per-program daily_revenue_per_user estimate shown before an affiliate joins.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Telegram Spam FAQ — unwelcome private messages, username search and group moderation.
• Telegram Terms of Service for Affiliate Programs — creator and affiliate rules, the four prohibited activities, the 21-day hold, termination and availability.
• Telegram API, affiliate programs — commission permille, duration, termination, affiliate peers and the earnings estimate.
• Telegram API, bots.updateStarRefProgram — raise-only changes and the STARREF errors.
• Telegram API, client configuration — sample starref values and the anti-spam group size.
• Telegram blog, Affiliate Programs (4 December 2024) — the launch announcement.
• Telegram Terms of Service for Stars — what Stars buy and the refund rules.
• Telegram Bot Developer Terms — advertising credit per Star, section 6.2.3.
• Telegram Terms of Service — third-party promotions in channels, data scraping and group size.
• Telegram, Bots: an introduction for developers — "Bots can't start conversations with users."
• Telegram Bots FAQ — per-chat pace, bulk pace and paid broadcasts.
• Telegram Bot Features — deep-link start parameters.
• Telegram Bot API — business connections and the 24-hour reply window.
• Telegram API, channel and group statistics — new members by source.
• Telegram API, obtaining an API ID — the "banned forever" sentence.
• Telegram Channels FAQ — the first 200 subscribers.
• Telegram Ad Platform, getting started — channels with 1000+ subscribers.
• Telegram Ad Policies and Guidelines — destination rules 4.1 and 4.5, prohibited content 5.7.
• Telegram blog — the 11 June and 14 July 2026 updates.
• Telegram Privacy Policy — "more than 1 billion users".
• Amazon Associates Program Policies — solicited direct messages and trademark use in group names.
• 16 CFR Part 255, FTC Endorsement Guides — disclosure of paid endorsements.
• Directive 2002/58/EC, Article 13 — consent for direct marketing by electronic mail.