How to Earn Telegram Stars with Affiliate Programs: Directory Browsing, Referral Links & Lifetime Commissions
Some mini apps offer a share of what they earn to anybody who brings them users. You take a link from a directory inside Telegram, post it where your audience is, and a percentage of what those people later spend arrives in your Stars balance.
No application, no approval, no minimum. Which makes the interesting question not whether you can do it, but what you are agreeing to when you do.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Find the directory and read a program's terms.
- check_circle Understand what you are actually paid for.
- check_circle Judge which programs are worth your audience.
- check_circle Say so plainly when a link earns you money.
The directory, the link and the balance all live in the same place — there is no outside service in the middle.
payments What you are being paid for
Not for the click, and not for the sign-up. An affiliate link pays when the person who followed it spends Stars inside the app, and it keeps paying for as long as the program's window lasts. The developer sets both the share and the window, and both are shown before you join.
That single fact settles most of the questions people have about it. You are not being paid to recommend something; you are being paid a cut of what your readers hand over afterwards, which means the programs that pay best are the ones whose users spend most — not the ones whose users are happiest.
It is worth being clear-eyed rather than squeamish about this. Plenty of ordinary things work the same way, and there is nothing wrong with earning from a recommendation you would have made anyway. The problem starts when the payment begins choosing what you recommend, and it starts quietly.
Which programs are worth your audience
The commission rate is the least useful number on the page. What matters is what you are sending people into.
verified_user Worth promoting
block Not worth it
Promote what you would have mentioned anyway, and say that the link pays you. Everything else here follows from those two.
query_stats Reading your own numbers honestly
The dashboard shows how many people followed the link and how much has been credited, and the gap between those two is the only figure that tells you anything. A large number of visits with almost no earnings does not mean the link is broken; it means the people you sent looked and left, which is information about the app rather than about your audience.
The other trap is treating a good month as a plan. Affiliate income is a share of other people's spending, so it rises and falls with things you do not control and stops entirely when a developer ends a program. It is a supplement to whatever you were already doing, and the moment it becomes the reason you publish, the publishing starts to change shape.
settings Joining one
- Open the affiliate directory It sits with your Stars balance in settings.
- Read the share and the window Both are set by the developer.
- Open the app yourself first Before your name is attached to it.
- Take your link and post it plainly No outside tracker is involved.
- Say that it pays you One sentence, every time.
- Watch visits against earnings The gap describes the app, not you.
This page is one way Stars arrive. The curriculum step is the whole economy they move through: where they come from, what they buy, how a balance is held and what it is worth at either end.
Earning Stars through affiliate links at a glance
What the commission is actually paid for, which programs suit an audience, why disclosure settles most of it, and how to read visits against earnings, on one page. Tap to open it at full resolution.
![[Telegram 83] Affiliate Tracking & Deep Linking: Start Parameters, Attribution Metrics & Referral Funnel Architecture](https://tgway.com/images/guides/guide_18456.webp)
