How to get your first 1,000 users for a Telegram bot

Start with a bot worth sharing

Promotion multiplies what the bot already is. If people open it, try it once and never return, more traffic just means more people who tried it once. Before you spend an hour on promotion, make sure the bot does one job well.

A useful test: could you explain what the bot does in one sentence, to someone who has never heard of it? "Send it a TikTok link and it sends the video back" passes. "An all-in-one assistant for your daily life" doesn't, because nobody knows what to type first.

Bots that spread on their own usually share three traits:

• They solve a repeat problem. Saving a video, converting a file or translating a message happens again next week, so the bot stays in the chat list.
• The result is visible to others. A video someone downloaded, a sticker they made or a game played in a group gets seen by friends, who ask where it came from.
• They work in seconds. Every extra step before the first result loses people.

If you're still choosing what to build, the list of bot ideas is sorted by who you are and what your audience needs.

Make the bot clear before anyone taps Start

When someone opens your bot for the first time, they see an empty chat with the bot's description under "What can this bot do?" and a Start button. That screen decides whether they tap Start or close the chat.

• Description (set with /setdescription in @BotFather): up to 512 characters. Say what the bot does and what to send first. Skip the greeting.
• About text (/setabouttext): up to 120 characters, shown on the bot's profile. Lead with the job the bot does.
• Name and photo: use a name that says what it does, like "PDF Tools", and a simple square image without small text.
• Command menu: list only the commands people need, each with a short explanation.

Then make the first message after Start just as clear. A good welcome message gets people to their first result fast. There's a full walkthrough in how to write a /start message people read, and every BotFather setting is in how to change your bot's name, photo and description.

Use the audience you already have

Your first users almost always come from people who already know you. If you run a channel or a group, that's your starting point.

1. Post about it in your channel, and show the bot doing something rather than just announcing it. A short screen recording or a before-and-after image works better than "Check out our new bot!"
2. Pin the post so new subscribers see it too.
3. Put the link in your channel's description, so it stays visible after the post scrolls away.
4. Add the bot to your group if it's useful there. A downloader or a game that members use in the chat promotes itself every time someone uses it.
5. Mention it where you already post outside Telegram: your website, your other social accounts, your email signature.

If you don't have an audience yet, find the groups and channels where your future users already talk. Join them as a participant first. Answer questions, and share the bot when it genuinely solves something someone asked about. One helpful reply in the right group often brings more users than ten announcements.

Use a different link for every place

Telegram supports deep links: a normal bot link with a short code on the end. https://t.me/your_bot?start=channel opens your bot exactly like the normal link does, but when the user taps Start, the bot receives /start channel. If your bot saves that code, you know where each user came from.

Give each place its own code: one for your channel post, one for your website, one for each partner. After a week, you'll see which places bring real users and which just bring clicks. The code can be up to 64 characters, using letters, numbers, underscores and hyphens.

The bot has to record the parameter for this to work. If yours doesn't, you can still get a rough picture by posting in different places on different days and comparing new users per day in your bot's statistics. The details, with a table of example links, are in how to use deep links to track where users come from.

Build sharing into the bot

The cheapest user is one your existing user brings. Make that easy:

• Ask at the right moment. Right after the bot delivers a good result, a short line like "Useful? Send this bot to a friend" with a Share button gets far more taps than a request in the welcome message.
• Work in groups. A bot that people can use inside group chats gets seen by everyone in the group. The downloader template, for example, works in groups with /d and a link.
• Use inline mode where it fits. With inline mode, people type @your_bot and a query in any chat and send the result there. Every result shows your bot's name to the people in that chat. Read more in inline bots explained.
• Give people their own link. Some bots are built around sharing: in the anonymous messages bot, each user gets a personal link to post for their friends, and every friend who opens it sees the bot.

Referral rewards, like extra features for inviting friends, can work, but they attract people who invite fake accounts to collect the reward. If you add them, reward something that's hard to fake, such as the invited friend actually using the bot.

Cross-promotion and ads

Once your own channels are tapped out, borrow someone else's audience.

Cross-promotion with other channel owners

Find channels your future users read, of a similar size to yours, and offer a swap: you mention their channel, they mention your bot. Small channel owners are often happy to do this, because it costs them nothing. A few tips:

• Pick channels where the topic matches. A downloader bot fits a channel about memes or video editing better than one about finance.
• Write the post for them, in their style, so it's easy to say yes.
• Give each partner their own deep link so you can see whose audience actually used the bot.

Paid mentions in bigger channels work the same way, and the same tracking tells you whether the price was worth it.

Telegram Ads

Telegram runs its own ad platform, Telegram Ads. Bot owners who earn Telegram Stars can spend them there. It can reach people who would never find your bot otherwise, but it's paid, and the rules and minimum budgets change, so check Telegram's current terms before you plan around it. Start small, use a tracked link and judge it by users who stay, not by clicks.

What not to do

Some shortcuts look like growth for a day and then damage the bot for good.

• Spamming groups. Posting your link in groups that didn't ask for it gets you removed and reported. It also teaches people to associate your bot's name with spam.
• Buying fake users. Fake accounts never use the bot, never share it and never pay for anything. They make your statistics useless, because you can no longer tell whether a change helped real users.
• Mass-adding people to groups. Adding strangers to a group or channel to show them your bot annoys almost everyone, gets reported, and risks restrictions on the account that does it.
• Pushing too many broadcasts. A bot can only message people who started it, and every user who blocks it is gone for good. See how to message all your users without losing them.
• Hiding the bot behind too many walls. Making new users join several channels before the bot works brings a quick bump in subscribers and a lot of people who leave. If you want it, read whether mandatory subscription is worth it first.

Real growth from these tactics is slower. It's also the only kind that's still there next month.

Keep the users you get

Getting 1,000 people to tap Start is half the job. The other half is how many still use the bot a week later. Watch active users, not just new ones. If Echo Maker runs your bot, the admin panel shows new and active users and messages, by day and by month.

If new users arrive but active users stay flat, the problem isn't promotion. Look at the first minute instead: is the description clear, does the welcome message lead to a result, and does the bot do what the link promised? Fix that before you go looking for more traffic.