I Created a City Telegram Channel and Tried to Make Money for 365 Days. Here's What Happened

[00:01] Telegram channel, having only experience running VK groups. Today I have five monetized channels and I'll tell you all about them. From the first 200 subscribers to six-figure sums. Let's go. Let's start with the most important question: why

[00:14] city Telegram channels? I already had experience with VK semantic groups, but I was looking for something more stable and scalable. And that's why the choice fell on regional channels. First, a clear target audience. City residents are always

[00:27] interested in local news. What roads are closed, what is happening in the city. Almost everyone is subscribed to their city's channel. Second, simplicity take a photo of the sunset, and voila, the post is ready. News, events, accidents, there is

[00:41] always enough content. Third. Monetization. I studied the statistics of other city channels and saw that even small channels through Yandex YAN and other exchanges earn decent money with minimal investment.

[00:53] easiest direction for a beginner. At least that's what it seemed to me then. The first month was full of disappointments. After I created the channel and filled it with content, I started attracting

[01:05] subscribers and spent money on advertising, but the results were meager. In the first month there were only 200 subscribers, in the second month there were about 500 subscribers. 30 people a day, and that's barely enough. I was about to give up , but I decided to give it one last chance.

[01:19] I found a public page on VKontakte and bought advertising for 500 rubles. and forgot about the phone for a while . An hour later, I accidentally glanced at the statistics of 500 applications, updating 520. Then again, 550. People are coming in at a rate of 10-20 per minute. Total 1,500

[01:34] subscribers per day. Having invested 500 rubles, I received 1.00 people. I was shocked. 33 kopecks For subscribers versus the market price of 10-17 rubles. For the first time in a month, I felt like I was on to something real. I understood the formulas and started scaling. Purchasing through all

[01:50] available channels. Of course, there were those who did not agree to publish their competitors, but basically everything was positive. Having spent 5,000 rubles, I got about 4,000 subscribers. The cost turned out to be a little more than a ruble.

[02:04] With 4,000 subscribers and a daily reach of 1,200 views in 24 hours, I started thinking about how I would monetize. The first thing I did was submit applications to advertising exchanges. The first Yandex RC, which automatically selects and posts ads, and

[02:19] Teleg. There you will receive requests for advertising placement. One of the important eliminate the need to create advertising labels, invoices, and receipts. To work with these platforms, I registered as self-employed through the

[02:34] Moinalog app. The tax on professional income is 6%. The next day, oddly enough , the connection applications were approved. The first advertisement was released 30 minutes after the approval of the advertising motor oil. CPM 600 rub. The advertising post

[02:47] received 2,800 views in 48 hours. And they paid me 1,700 rubles for it. But the reality turned out to be more complex. These were the first advertising recordings. They always came out with higher CPM. Over time, it leveled out to 300 rubles. For approximately the

[03:02] that I showed earlier, they would pay 850 rubles. And here it is logical to ask the question: what does this mysterious CPM depend on, on which it depends whether mysterious CPM depend on, on which it depends whether I will receive 1,700 rubles. or 850 rubles. for an

[03:16] advertising post. The CPM depends on how vibrant and engaged your audience is, how clearly its geography and channel topic are defined. Competition among advertisers in your segment also plays a role. It's an auction where the bids

[03:29] go up as people fight for your readers. Small channels often maintain high CPMs due to a cleaner audience, and the final price is largely determined by people's behavior when viewing ads. These are mainly clicks on ads. What's

[03:44] in Gain's style? This month I have received four requests for placement, all for 24 hours. I set the price at 700 rubles. Also, don't forget about your own advertising sales. So far, only one person has written to me . We agreed on accommodation for 24

[03:58] hours for 700 rubles. In total, for the first incomplete month, Xia brought me 26 rubles, 2,458 rubles. Telegin and own sales 700

[04:10] rubles. Telegin and own sales 700 rubles. On expenses tax 6% 1,421 rub. Well, rubles. On expenses tax 6% 1,421 rub. Well, and the investment in advertising is 4800. In total, and the investment in advertising is 4800. In total, I managed to pull out a net profit of 17,463

[04:22] rubles. Having received the first money, I decided to scale up this scheme. Allocated about 30,000 rubles. and launched three channels at once in different cities. In exactly the same way, I selected a selection of good city VK groups, analyzed the

[04:35] group's activity for fraud, and the appropriateness of the price. Although there were groups where the price was not justified by the high cost, it was still worth the risk. For reporting purposes, I kept a table where I wrote down where and for how long I was accommodated, and

[04:47] calculated the results. Using this data, I was able to evaluate the advertising post and the VK group itself from which the advertisement was taken. But it doesn't always work that way. VK doesn't always behave logically and may simply not provide reach to an advertising post.

[05:01] results. The first channel has 4,000 subscribers, the second channel has 2 with 12 and the third channel has 1,000. I spent almost the same amount on all channels, but the results were radically different. The third channel turned out to be the deadest, and I put it

[05:15] aside. But the real problem only started when I started monetizing these channels. Once I started to tighten moderation. For 3 months in a row, my requests to connect new channels were rejected. I watched their webinars,

[05:28] studied the requirements, and was only able to connect the channels in the fourth month. Now about where I get my subscribers from. As you understand, the main method of attraction is VK. All I did was come up with working creatives that actually

[05:40] work and bring in subscribers. and bought advertising in groups. Thus, the main channel could bring in between 1,500 and 4,000 subscribers per month. Time passed, and it was necessary to look for new ways of attracting people. My goal was to

[05:52] become the most popular channel in the city, but the current tempo was not satisfactory. This is how I came to buy my own VK group. It cost me 12,000 rubles. It consisted of 10,000 people. The initial plan was to get the group going and get

[06:05] subscribers into Telegram. One of the big advantages of VK is that with the right content, a group can self-produce. Now I have an average of 1,000 subscribers per small town. Besides the fact that I was transferring subscribers and testing new

[06:18] creatives in my group, it also brought in money. The VK group is connected to the market platform. This means that advertisers there buy advertising from us for a fixed price. On average, the VK group brought me 5,000 per

[06:31] month. Once I successfully mastered VK, I switched to other platforms where I could gain subscribers organically. Next in line were short YouTube videos. The principle is very simple.

[06:45] into short YouTube videos, using both voiceover and simple editing. I posted about 15 short videos, and 900 people subscribed to the channel . The main audience came from the first shot. He himself has garnered 290,000

[06:59] views. For some reason, all the others didn't get any views. Upon arrival at TG, everything is still difficult. Only 15 people came, but there was no strong creativity, so it’s worth testing this direction further. And what about TikTok? All this happened

[07:13] I didn’t really believe that I could get anything here. But I still created my TikTok account, warmed it up a bit, and subscribed to all the channels that post videos under my city's hashtag. Over the last few days of warming up, I

[07:27] uploaded my first video, and, oddly enough , it didn’t collect much in a week . I didn't go further there. At some point, a month later, I finally remembered my TikTok account, logged in, and saw a bunch of

[07:39] different big numbers under my profile icon. I went to the profile and was a little surprised. The video has collected 10,000 views and many comments from people in the city. 2,500 people have subscribed to the channel, and I’m still testing it out, just like with YouTube. Telegram also has its own organic

[07:53] growth. Let's say, through a search for similar channels. For closed channels, a signature is inserted at the end of the post. This is necessary so that reposts also bring in subscribers. Thanks to the large number of reposts, about 200 people subscribed to my channel

[08:05] . In search of topics of interest to city residents and ways to advance through search, I went to Yandex World Stat and found out which queries are most frequently entered. Among the requests, I saw a demand for city

[08:18] cameras. About 10,000 people are interested in this question. And I immediately had the idea to make a bot for viewing cameras. Quickly sketched out the technical specifications. I started developing it. Within an hour the project was ready. Of course, there were some

[08:32] flaws, but I posted it in the bots. I have made it mandatory to subscribe. This means that until a person signs up, he will not see the cameras. I didn't advertise the battery, it itself is a little bit PowerP, of course, but

[08:44] it attracts 100 people a month. If you want to dig deeper into this, I I post all the useful information about which creatives work, get the most views, and are good at bringing in subscribers. All the tips for purchasing, how to

[08:57] break even immediately upon purchase, and other methods of attracting customers. And, of course, about channel monetization. Everything without blue and water. For example, right now I posted a relevant creative for December-January, which is absolutely fire. Link in the description.

[09:11] As is well known, the first three channels in the city skim the cream. They are responsible for the posts, so Xia is the best option for channel monetization. But there are also downsides. The advertising was monotonous, and subscribers quickly became tired of it.

[09:25] Consequently, the CPM dropped and he started posting ads with a low CPM of 150-200. I didn't put up with this and started to tune it more precisely. Set the minimum threshold at 300 rubles. True, there was less advertising, but I don’t think

[09:38] I lost much money. I don't know what it's connected with, but after a month I disabled the minimum POGMA and it started leaving with a high CPM. 1.0001.500. I do n’t know how best to do it, but I know one thing: I don’t want to squeeze the channel with a

[09:52] will cost pennies. After enabling the minimum threshold, I was faced with the fact that I had a lot of free advertising spaces and I needed to somehow close them. I started developing my sales and affiliate

[10:05] programs. In terms of my sales, I passed on my price list to everyone who was placing ads in competitors' channels, and this bore some small fruit. In this way, I developed my regular clients. Affiliate programs: what they are and how they

[10:17] work. There are a lot of affiliate programs that pay for targeted actions. Let's look at the Yandex+ offer. will receive a free subscription for a certain period of time, say, a month.

[10:31] During this period, affiliate programs allowed me to earn a little more than even with YAN. And don't forget about Lego Ins, which gives you five points a month. This is created. I started releasing half as many ads and earning more. After

[10:46] channel, direct advertising sales increased . More people are contacting me via private messages to buy advertising. Federal and regional companies have become regular customers. To generate more income, I created a second channel to the main channel in order to

[10:59] transfer subscribers there via a welcome bot. Each month I summarized the results in an Excel spreadsheet. After reaching 10,000 subscribers, I had to register with Roskomnadzor. Without it, you simply won’t be

[11:12] able to post ads unless you connect it. It took me about a month to register due to system bugs, but usually it's done within a week. In the channel description, you will need to leave a link to the State Services website, confirming

[11:25] that the channel is registered. Things are getting closer to summer, and everything is going so well that a new type of creative has been created, and VK is starting to generate an unrealistically large amount of reach and applications. I bought up all the available spaces in my

[11:39] city and am simultaneously starting to fill the other two cities. As expected, creative projects are also taking off in other cities. So , I spent the whole summer working on similar creatives. 4,100 subscribers migrated to the main channel , 4,500 to the second, and

[11:53] 2,800 to the third. I spent about 60,000 rubles on this. But thanks to monetization on purchases, I was able to not only fully recoup the purchase immediately, but also earn a little money. I posted this life hack on my Telegram channel, link in the description. To make

[12:08] content creation easier, I created a bot that monitors content in cities and rates it. If it's just fire, he sends it to me in private messages. By autumn there was a the creative to suit him and got my record 3,000 subscribers from one

[12:23] post. Infopold was also located in a neighboring city, and I also managed to stock up there, spending 10,000 rubles. new arrivals. So, suddenly I have my fifth channel, which is successfully connected to the

[12:35] PC. The emergence of a new Mac messenger. It is unclear whether he will shoot or not, but according to statistics, 40% of the population uses Max. By the way, TEGO 74. And news about messenger only fuels interest. I created a channel there, because if you have

[12:51] 10,000 subscribers on TG or VK, you can create your own channel in the beta version. I made a bot that copies posts from my Telegram and publishes them in Max. So I have nothing to lose. Now let 's move on to the most interesting part. How much did I

[13:05] earn in a full month from five Telegram channels? I earned 24,800 from direct advertising sales Telegram channels? I earned 24,800 from direct advertising sales , 8,450 from Telegin, 87,573 from me, and 17,542 from other affiliates. Total 140,366

[13:21] Total 140,366 rubles. September - 161, October - 140 and November 212. Here I started testing a new direction of filling second channels for sales, and December is not over yet. If you watched to the end, you'll definitely

[13:35] enjoy my Telegram channel on regional news. There I break down everything in detail: creatives, purchases, monetization without fluff, only what works. Link in the description. Yeah.