Two quite different things share the word affiliate on Telegram today. One is the program Telegram runs itself, paid in Stars, which only covers mini apps. The other is the older trade of posting outside offers, an Amazon link or a CPA lead form, into a channel or a group and earning from the sale somewhere else.
You will see telegram affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing with telegram, affiliate marketing through telegram, a telegram affiliate bot, a telegram bot affiliate program and plain telegram affiliate used for the same idea, and the advice attached to each one assumes a different mechanism underneath. Put them side by side and one thing decides almost everything: who is allowed to send the first message.
What is the Telegram affiliate program, and who can join it?
It is a referral scheme that Telegram launched in December 2024 for mini apps that sell digital goods for Stars. A developer opens a program from the mini app's profile and sets two numbers: a commission rate and a commission period. The API documentation expresses the rate in permille and keeps its floor and ceiling in client configuration rather than publishing them. Once the program exists, both numbers can only go up. A developer who wants to lower them has to end the program and create a new one, and only the account that owns the mini app can create, change or end it.
So what is telegram affiliate program membership from the other side? Any user can join. In the app it sits under Settings › My Stars, where active programs can be sorted by start date, revenue or potential profit, and there is no limit on how many you join. Joining issues a unique link tied to one Star balance you choose: your personal account, a channel you own or a mini app you develop. The balance cannot be changed on that link later, and Stars cannot be moved between balances, so the choice decides what the commission can be spent on.
When does a referral count?
A referral counts when someone starts the mini app for the first time through your link. From that moment, every purchase they make with Stars pays you a commission for the length of the period the developer set, according to Telegram's affiliate programs guide. A user who already opened the app before clicking your link earns you nothing. Physical products sold through third-party payment providers pay no commission at all. The money arrives as Stars, not cash. Turning Stars into anything else goes through Telegram's own withdrawal route, with a minimum held in server configuration, which is why a telegram channel affiliate program balance is usually spent inside Telegram on ads, giveaways or gifts rather than withdrawn.
The same guide adds one sentence that most write-ups on this affiliate program on telegram leave out. Sending your link to strangers, or posting it in public groups, could lead to temporary limitations on your account. That is Telegram describing its own spam controls, in its own program, and it frames everything below.
Affiliate marketing on Telegram with outside offers
Outside offers work on different rules, because Telegram is only the carrier. Amazon affiliate marketing on telegram is the familiar case: a channel posts deals with tagged Amazon links, and Amazon pays the commission. Amazon's Associates operating agreement requires the statement "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases" wherever its program content appears, and a Telegram channel counts. The US regulator says the same thing more broadly. The FTC's endorsement guidance wants a clear disclosure next to the link, and it notes that a bare label such as "affiliate link" may not be understood.
An amazon affiliate telegram bot, the most common affiliate marketing telegram bot, is usually a small Bot API program that rewrites product links with your tag before posting them into a channel. Telegram cpa marketing follows the same pattern with lead forms instead of shops, and the affiliate marketing groups on telegram that networks advertise are mostly channels of offers for publishers, not places to post your own links.
How to start affiliate marketing on telegram, then, is less about Telegram than about the offer: pick a network whose terms allow the platform, disclose, and build a channel people actually want to read. Telegram influencer marketing is the paid version: a brand buys a post in someone else's channel.
Which part of Telegram does which job in an affiliate funnel?
Each surface carries a different job, and each one stops somewhere different. A channel broadcasts to people who chose to follow it and has no subscriber ceiling. A group holds the discussion and, according to Telegram's FAQ, takes up to 200,000 members. A bot answers people who have already written to it. A mini app link pays the Stars commission described above. Direct messages from accounts are the only surface that can reach someone who never asked, which is exactly why they draw the most scrutiny.
| Surface | Can write first? | Published limit | Affiliate job | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Channel | No, readers follow | No subscriber cap | Deal posts, disclosed links | Slow growth |
| Group | No, members join | 200,000 members | Questions, trust, replies | Admins removing link posts |
| Bot | No | About 30 messages per second | Link rewriting, opt-in alerts | Users blocking it |
| Mini app referral link | No | Rate and period set by developer | Stars commission | Limits if sent to strangers |
| DMs from accounts | Yes | None published | Follow-ups, outreach | Spam reports, restrictions |
Read down the second column and the funnel shapes itself. Telegram channel affiliate marketing and telegram group affiliate marketing both depend on people arriving on their own, which is why every serious telegram group for affiliate marketing spends its effort on reasons to stay rather than on reach. Choosing telegram groups for marketing means choosing ones whose admins allow offers at all. A telegram bot for affiliate marketing sits behind them, answering people who have already tapped Start. The Block Bot button is the only thing that stops a bot, so a bot that spams its own users loses them for good.
That leaves direct messages, and the question of who sends them.
DM marketing on Telegram is where the spam line sits
Direct message marketing means opening a private conversation to sell, follow up or hand over a link. Most guides on a dm marketing strategy are written for Instagram. On Telegram the first question is technical: a bot cannot do it. Telegram's bot documentation says plainly that bots cannot start conversations with users. A user must message the bot first or add it to a group. This one rule is why telegram bot marketing means opt-in broadcasts, and why every tool that sends bulk DMs to people who never wrote first is not really a bot but a logged-in user account.
Bots that do have an audience still meet a ceiling. The bot FAQ puts broadcasts at about 30 messages per second, and paid broadcasts enabled in BotFather lift that to 1,000 per second at 0.1 Stars for each message over the free limit. A telegram marketing bot sending to its own subscribers is the cleanest form of direct messaging marketing the platform offers.
Accounts are different. No per-day DM figure is published for user accounts; the numbers vendors quote are their own observations. It does publish its Terms of Service, which forbid using the service to send spam. When enough recipients report messages they did not want, the account is restricted, often to messaging only mutual contacts, and outreach code usually meets a PEER_FLOOD error that Telegram's public error list does not define. Unsolicited bulk messages are what that control exists to stop.
Where agencies and services fit
A dm marketing agency or a list of dm marketing services on Telegram is selling one of three things: content for your channel, paid posts in other people's channels, or outreach run from accounts the agency controls. The third one carries the restriction risk above, and the agency is spending its accounts, not yours. Ask which of the three you are buying before you pay for telegram marketing services of any kind. Software is the fourth route. Marketing software that asks for a bot token behaves nothing like software that asks for an account login, and the installer screen tells you which one you have. Some sell rich cards too, such as PostBot posts with buttons sent from an account.
Do you need telegram marketing tools, and are any free?
Most marketing in telegram needs nothing beyond the app itself. Scheduling, polls, invite links and channel statistics are built in. Free telegram marketing tools beyond that are usually bots that post, rewrite links or count members, and analytics sites that index public channels. The five kinds of software sold as Telegram tools differ mainly in whether they run as a bot or inside your account.
Paid account-based suites exist for one reason: some teams run many accounts at once. Telegram Solutions is a Windows desktop panel that holds the accounts you bring, and the walkthrough below runs through its screens. Before anything else it lets you keep many logins in one session manager, run a check on a batch of sessions before a run, read the registration month Telegram shows on a first message, and set privacy options across many accounts in one pass.
The rest maps onto the jobs people list when they search for telegram marketing tools: scraper, extract, add, search, invite member. In the panel that means finding the people who actually post and comment in a chat, checking which phone numbers have a Telegram account, adding your saved contacts to a group, working through a list of groups to join, and making many channels and groups at once. Pacing sits underneath all of it, and activity bots and wait handling only keep accounts in ordinary use.
Limits the software keeps
It does not raise any Telegram limit, because those live on Telegram's servers. It does not supply accounts or proxies. It does not make unwanted messages acceptable to the people who receive them, and a scraped member list is personal data: messaging those people is direct marketing under GDPR, CAN-SPAM and their equivalents, so you need a lawful basis the tool cannot give you. Nor is it a telegram marketing platform in the SaaS sense, and AI marketing telegram add-ons that write copy do not change who is allowed to receive it.
A telegram marketing strategy that holds up
How to do telegram marketing, or how to use telegram for marketing at all, comes down to the order of the surfaces. Content in a channel first, a group for questions second, a bot for people who opt in, and direct messages only to people who asked or already know you. This is real telegram marketing. It is also how to do affiliate marketing on telegram, and how to use telegram for affiliate marketing, without spending accounts on reports.
A few telegram marketing tips follow from the table. Disclose every paid link. Answer in the group before you post the next offer. Use the bot for alerts people subscribed to. Treat Stars commissions as a bonus for content that already brings people in, not a reason to post links in public groups. Telegram marketing examples that last are mostly boring: a deals channel with a disclosure line, a group that answers questions, a bot that sends what people asked for.
Using telegram for marketing this way is slower, and slower is the version that keeps working. Any telegram marketing pro will tell you the same about telegram channel marketing, telegram group marketing and telegram digital marketing as a whole: the audience you did not have to message first is the one that stays.