Manual: how to sell and buy the channel in the Telegram

Contents:
1. Reasons to buy a Telegram-channel, and what to do with it next.
2. Where to look for Telegram-channels, which can be purchased, and where to put up for sale?
3. How to buy a channel in a Telegram – determine the cost.
4. How to sell a channel in a Telegram – deal scheme.
5. Risks and pitfalls in the sale and purchase.
6. How to create a Telegram-channel for sale.
 

In deals involving Telegram Messenger, similarly as in any other business, two parties are involved. In this article, we will tell to potential sellers how to sell the channel in the Telegram with the maximum gain, and for buyers – how to buy the channel in the Telegram and avoid the fraud.
 

Reasons to buy a Telegram-channel, and what to do with it next.

The goal for everyone who wants to buy a channel in Telegram is to make money on it. There are two ways:

• To receive income from advertising: you need regularly invest in promotion and try to improve the content – only on such conditions, you can actually earn money on advertising posts.
• Either, you can earn money with the difference in price: “pump up” the audience and resell more expensively – this way is faster, but also is more difficult.

When you choose public page, the first thing you need to look – how old is it? The audience of any community loses interest over time. Therefore, it is better to buy not very old channel. In the channel which was created long ago can be many participants, but only half of them reads posts. The public page is gradually stagnating, therefore, the its value is low. On the contrary, a very young channel (3-4 months) isn’t also the best variant. The newly created channel at the start can be very advertised. So, the number of views will considerably exceed the number of subscribers. These figures will be a strong argument for a valuable deal, but over time, the indicators will fall. Thereby, it’s better to buy public page in the middle of the life cycle, when the initial “hype” has died down, but the audience hasn’t had time to fizzle out.

Then we need to think over the strategy about content. What is the price of writing posts and what is the quality of them, in comparison to the previous owner? Beforehand, it is necessary to find a copywriter, if the buyer isn’t the author. The expenditure of time and money must be included in the assessment of profitability of purchase. In addition, you will need to buy advertising or negotiate about mutual advertisement. This also takes time and money.

Finally, you need to estimate at what price you can sell advertising. You can ask the current owner, although he certainly will exaggerate the amount to increase the valuation. You can make comparison with the tariffs in similar channels – write a request to the administrator for accommodation. Usually, prices are as follows: “general” subjects (humor, news, etc.) – an advertising post for 10 000 active participants costs 35 dollars. “Narrow” topics (author’s content) – advertisement for an audience of 10,000 participants sell for 120 dollars. Estimate the frequency of advertising: maximum – 5 times a month, and on average – 4.

Now we should to consider the example. If you buy a group about narrow topics with 10,000 subscribers for $ 1,700, you can receive about $ 430 per month from advertising. Subtract the cost of content (about $ 170), will remain $ 260. There will also be advertising costs to maintain activity, about $ 130. The income remains $ 120 per month. From these sample calculations is clear that if you want to make a decent business out of an investment in a channel, you need to add to the budget of purchase also the starting capital for advertising and content.

Spending another $ 1,700 for promotion, you can double the audience, that is, there will be 20,000 people. The content will still go $ 170 monthly, but advertising will bring already $ 860. Therefore, it is more profitable to first spend a little more money for promotion of community. This will raise the price of placing the post. So you reduce the percentage of costs for content from the total profit.

Where to look for Telegram-channels, which can be purchased, and where to put up for sale?

Where to apply for purchase-sale? Of course, the main trading platform is the messenger. In order to sell or buy a channel, there are special public marketplaces in the Telegram, where there is statistics, which is necessary for the purchase decision. Of course, there are also special sites, but they can be unreliable, because it is not always possible to find real feedback about their work. The owners of marketplaces don’t work for free. The first option: the seller pays a fixed price for the publication of the announcement and waits for someone to take an interest and write to him. The second option: placement in the catalog is free, but the marketplace takes a percent from the transaction. In the second case, owner of marketplace usually asked to remove the reference to the administrator from the description, in order to customers don’t agree between themselves.

Sellers are in a more profitable position – there is another possibility to find a buyer, in addition to marketplaces and catalogues. You can offer your project directly to other administrators in personal chats. It’s not worth writing to everyone – it makes sense to send out an offer to network owners from several channels that are similar to yours on topics. There is a high probability that the purchase may interest them.

How to buy a channel in a Telegram – determine the cost.

Let’s see what the cost of the Telegram-project and what it depends on. The main criterion – theme of the community. You should focus on such figures for one subscriber, depending on the topic:

• weak topics – content intended for a wide audience, such as humor, entertainments, news and other non-unique or autogenerated content – up to 17 cents / person;
• “fatty” topics – it’s unique author content in such areas as IT, marketing, analytics, and other highly specialized topics – from 17 to 43 cents / person.

It’s easy to calculate the subscriber’s cost : divide the cost of the channel by the number of subscribers, mentioned in the profile. If the owner asks for more – the price is clearly exaggerated.
 

The next criterion is involvement. Marvellously, the number of subscribers listed in the Telegram in the community profile is not equal to the number of real readers. Some of them can be bots, and some of them can be live users who have stopped reading the community. Check the involvement – look, how many views the messages have. This can be considered as the number of active subscribers in the first approximation. In such a calculation, the price for an active subscriber can vary up to 35 cents / person for weak topics and up to 87 cents / person for fatty.

Don’t be lazy to check earlier messages in order to avoid cheating views before selling. We’ll figure out how to determine the cheating. For example: we have a channel with 10,000 subscribers. If two weeks ago the messages had an average of 3,000 views, and the current ones had 6,000, then it was done by reposting to other publics or using paid services simulating real users.

It is possible to have such situation: if posts are published rarely, then views are “cheating” by the messenger – because viewing the same message by the same user in two days will be considered as a new unique view. The Telegram works in such a way that at the moment when you open the channel, the messenger downloads the last 5 messages from the channel, and sets the status “Viewed” for two last messages. Let’s say, that posts on the channel go out once a week, and the person had looked at the last post a week ago. After that, reappears a new post in the channel. It took more than two days, and the messenger will count the views of the last two articles. As a result, the penultimate post will receive twice as many views as it actually is. If you look narrowly at such channel, you should consider this feature of the messenger.

On the contrary, if posts go out often, 2-3 times a day, then subscribers usually look at several posts at time. And all subscribers will do it at different intervals, thus not cheating up views of any particular recent record.

Another tool for testing really active participants: posting in the messages of the goo.gl-link . This is a link-cutter from Google, which allows you to view all the analytics of conversions on this address to any user. That’s, you can see the real number of active readers and learn activity in the context of countries. It lets to identify the “garbage traffic”, that is, users from non-earmarked or insolvent countries (in the case of English-language channels – Iran). You can publish any relevant content to the community in such a link, for example, you can insert the address of the Telegraph-article. If the author doesn’t want to waste time for generating new content, often in the link is published a selection of the best posts of the channel. Experienced sellers posts a goo.gl-link in advance to provide all the information to customer.

The positive factor – the availability of project placements on the sites-catalogues because this work is also needs to spend time and money. The existence of the channel in the catalogues will bring additional traffic and proposals for advertising – in most cases advertisers choose a places for advertising on such sites.

How to sell a channel in a Telegram – deal scheme.

To protect against mutual deception, parties should have an intermediary which will accompany the purchase – sale. In Telegram they are called “guarantors”. It should be a tested person who has a reputation in the messenger that he values ​​(for example, he owns a well-known bot or channel, website about Telegram, conducts educational seminars or courses) – otherwise the intermediary can be in collusion with one of the parties. Telegram-exchanges usually have their own guarantors, which accompany the transfer of rights. So, the algorithm of actions:

• Participants of the transaction choose an intermediary that is trusted by both parties;
• The owner of the public page removes from the sold account all extraneous contacts and correspondence which don’t related to the subject of the transaction – this needs to be done because the new owner will have access to the entire account;
• The buyer transfers the payment to the account of the guarantor;
• The seller transfers access to the account to the number of the new owner after transferring to the guarantor of payment;
• The buyer needs to check the active sessions in the account: there must be only one – his own, otherwise the fraud can’t be questioned. To do this, open the section Privacy and security, the Active sessions item.
• When the buyer confirms that access to the account has been received, the guarantor sends money to the seller.

Not everyone knows how to transfer access to another number. It easy to make: go to Settings → in the block of the information on the account of the user (Info) click in the field Phone → in the opened window press Change number.

Risks and pitfalls in the sale and purchase.

To avoid problems, follow these recommendations:

1. Any of the parties may be in collusion with the guarantor: don’t give the buyer the right to account after receiving the money, or not transfer money to the owner after changing the number in account. Be careful when choosing an intermediary, ask for feedback about him in personal correspondence with other administrators who have already used his services.
2. In order to deceive, there may be frauds with duplication of accounts of popular users – with identical photos and descriptions, and a very similar nickname. How to check that you are not dealing with a fraudster? Check if the username of the person matches the one specified in the contacts of the group, site, etc.
3. One channel – one SIM-card. Due to inexperience, many register the group, which is planned to be sold, to their main phone number. The transfer of rights to public is tantamount to transferring rights to the entire account. This means that you will have to clear the account of all contacts and personal correspondence so that the new owner doesn’t have access to them. That is, you will lose important messages irrevocably. Even worse, if the communities on the account are registered several – then they will have to sell all at once, in bulk. To avoid such problems, take the rule of registering each Telegram channel to a new SIM card, which is easy to buy.
4. The rule “each Telegram-channel – a separate SIM-card” applies to both the seller and the buyer. It’s recommended not to transfer the right to a public account to a personal account, but to a separate one, in order to avoid complications in the future. For easily sell the project later, you just need to buy an extra SIM card.

 



 

5. For buyers, the risk is present not only at the time of the transaction, but also in the long term. In the purchased community, there may be a decline in activity and the number of participants due to a change in the author’s style or the disclosure of the fact of sale. In Telegram, there is a much more sensitive audience than in social networks – the soul trade is always perceived negatively. Therefore, try to stick to the chosen style of publications and not to display the fact of change of the owner. Agree immediately with seller, that he hides from the audience this information.

How to create a Telegram-channel for sale.

Here there are tips for sellers. To create a good project, which can be profitable to sell, you need to take care of quality content and make efforts to promote – these topics are worthy of a separate article. Here we will discuss the issues related to the sale:

1. Register each Telegram channel for a new SIM card, which was specially bought for it. Remember that the transfer of rights to public will give the new owner access to the entire account. Therefore, you will have to clear your account of all contacts and personal correspondence. If the communities on the account are registered several – they will have to be sold in bulk.
2. If you yourself create the content for public, and realized that for further maintenance, the stable writing of interesting posts you doesn’t have enough time and energy – it’s better not to waste time, and immediately sell the Telegram channel. Don’t wait for it to “fizzle out”. The longer the public will be inactive, the more there will be unsubscribes, and the greater the decline in the activity of the audience. Accordingly, the profit from the sale will be significantly lower than at the peak of popularity.
3. It is better to untwist the unnamed -channel, that is, without binding to a particular person. Such a project will be difficult to sell, the audience will react negatively to the change of the author in a personal blog.

The market of public pages in Telegram is young and only is gaining momentum, so now is the best time for the most profitable deals. The demand so far exceeds the offer – to sell the group is much easier than to buy. Purchase and sale of Telegram channels isn’t as simple as it seems at first glance. But if you approach it prepared, the risks are reduced to a minimum, and both sides will get the desired result on mutually beneficial terms.