I’m working on a Python application that monitors deals in a specific market segment. Right now it’s just for my own use - the script finds good deals and sends notifications to my personal Telegram bot. But I’m thinking about expanding this idea.
I could create multiple bots targeting different regions and customize the search criteria based on what users want. Maybe start with local markets and then expand to other countries later.
My current setup runs on my home server, but if I wanted to offer this as a service to other people, I’m wondering about the business side. I’m thinking of starting free to build up users, then maybe charging around $5 per month for premium features.
I know there might be technical challenges with scaling the infrastructure, but I’m curious about the money-making aspect first. Have any of you successfully monetized Telegram bots? What strategies worked for getting customers and promoting your service?
I ran something similar for property deals for about 18 months. Hit around $2k monthly with 200 paid subscribers at my peak. The tech wasn’t the problem - it was keeping people around. Users want instant results and bail if your bot doesn’t find deals they love in the first week. What saved me was proper onboarding. I built a quick questionnaire to figure out what each person actually wanted, then manually adjusted their filters for the first month. Extra work? Yeah, but it cut my churn from 60% to 20%. Watch out for liability issues too. Some users tried blaming me when deals went south, even though I was just pulling public data. Had to slap clear disclaimers and terms everywhere. $5 worked fine, but annual discounts really helped cash flow. Once you hit 50 users, focus on keeping them happy over finding new ones. Word of mouth in niche communities destroys any paid marketing.
yeah, i made decent cash with telegram bots but it took longer to really take off than i thought. biggest mistake was underpricing - users don’t really value cheap stuff. shoulda started at $10-15 instead of $5. the free tier really hit my server costs before i got paying customers lol. reddit and discord worked better for promo than telegram channels.
Been there, done that with Telegram bots. Started with a simple server monitoring alert bot and scaled it to hundreds of users.
Getting customers isn’t the hard part - it’s managing infrastructure when you grow. Multiple bots, different time zones, custom search criteria per user, subscriptions… it gets messy fast.
Learned this the hard way when my “simple” bot suddenly needed user management, payment processing, custom notifications, and database sync across regions. I spent more time maintaining plumbing than improving the actual service.
Now I use automation workflows instead of writing everything from scratch. Set up deal monitoring logic, connect Telegram APIs, add payment webhooks, user segmentation - no server maintenance or scaling headaches.
The business model works though. Started free, moved to $5-15 monthly tiers based on features. Prove value first with your free tier, then add premium stuff like faster notifications, custom filters, or multi-region support.
For promotion, Telegram channels in your niche work best. Partner with deal-sharing communities, offer free trials to active members.
Skip the infrastructure stress and focus on what makes money - finding better deals and keeping users happy. Check out https://latenode.com