telegram channel growth

I wouldn't buy subscribers. fake or inactive subscribers can hurt engagement metrics. Focus on attracting real viewers with good content, Shorts, and targeted ads instead

Be careful about buying subscribers, even if they are real people. From what I have read, having subscribers who don't actually watch or engage with your content can hurt your channel is performance in long run.

manager001 your instinct is right and the people saying subscribers first arent gatekeeping, theres real mechanics behind it. a sports channel with 30 subs converts paid traffic terribly: a new visitor lands, sees 30 members and 40 views a post, reads it as dead, so your ad spend buys clicks that bounce. you have to cross a credibility floor (few hundred to low thousands depending on niche) BEFORE ads pay off, otherwise youre paying to fill a leaky bucket. nikolaos is right that bot subs make it worse not better, they pad the count but telegram weights delivery by engagement, so a channel stuffed with bots actively suppresses your real reach. and romanslands point about paid placement in related channels is the cleanest seeding method because those are real humans already in your niche. so the order that actually works: seed the first credibility tranche with real niche members, get your view rate healthy, THEN switch ads on to compound, not before. whats your current sub count and which ad source were you going to start with?

There's a half truth in what you were told. An empty channel does have a cold start problem, nobody joins something that looks abandoned, so a little social proof helps. But fake subscribers, even human ones, are a weak base, and here's why.

Telegram and your ad results both care about view rate, not headcount. A channel with 5000 padded subs and 80 views per post reads as dead, your post view to subscriber ratio tanks, and that hurts both Telegram's own discovery and the cost per result on your ads. You also lose your real signal, you can't tell if your content converts when the audience is filler.

For a sports analysis channel the strongest move is content first. Post genuinely sharp free analysis and a few called results for a couple of weeks so there's a reason to subscribe, then point ads at that. If you want a seed so it doesn't look empty, keep it small and use real active members, not a bulk bot dump. Then let retargeting and word of mouth compound.

Short version, social proof yes, a fake pile no. The lever is engagement, not a big number that just sits there.

Best,
Floqal