You built a Telegram bot people actually use — a support assistant, a crypto tools bot, a community helper. The audience is there. The revenue usually is not, because "monetize the bot" sounds like a project: pick an ad network, integrate an API, decide where ads go, make sure they do not annoy anyone.
In FlowCastle it is a switch. This tutorial walks through both ways to run ads in your bot: the automatic mode, where a sponsored button is attached to messages your bot already sends, and the manual mode, where you place an ad in one exact spot — say, a daily digest. We will use TomoAds, the first ad network available as a FlowCastle module — a crypto-first network built around Telegram traffic. Total setup time is about ten minutes, and none of it involves code.
How sponsored messages work
Before the clicks, the model — because it is deliberately conservative.
A sponsored message in FlowCastle is not a separate ad blast. It is a small URL button attached below a regular message your bot was going to send anyway. The bot never sends extra messages to show an ad, never interrupts a flow, and never injects anything into the message text itself. Subscribers see the conversation they expected, with one labeled button underneath — tap it and the advertiser's page opens; ignore it and nothing happens.
Three guardrails are built in:
- Frequency cap. At most one sponsored button per N messages per contact — you choose N, the default is one ad per ten messages.
- No ad, no trace. If the network has no campaign to serve right now, the message goes out clean. Your subscribers cannot tell the difference.
- Never in test runs. When you test your bot inside FlowCastle, ads are suppressed, so your test transcripts stay clean.
How much you earn depends on the campaigns running for your audience. TomoAds is a crypto-first ad network: campaigns come from crypto and Web3 projects buying Telegram traffic, clicks are verified, and legitimate crypto projects are not hit with the arbitrary category bans common on mainstream ad networks — which is exactly why advertiser demand concentrates there. If your bot lives anywhere near crypto, trading, or Web3 communities, that is where fill and rates will be strongest. Reporting and payouts live in your TomoAds dashboard.
Sponsored messages currently run on Telegram bots. Now let's set it up.
Step 1 — get a TomoAds request key
Sign up at tomoads.com and create a placement of the type Telegram Bot Message Ads. Each placement has a request key (a hash) — that key is the only thing FlowCastle needs. Copy it.
Step 2 — install the TomoAds module
In the FlowCastle dashboard, open your project's Modules page and find the TomoAds card. Click install, and the Set up TomoAds dialog appears with a single field: Ad request key. Paste the key from step 1.
Below the field there is a checkbox: Enable sponsored messages automatically (recommended). Leave it checked — it switches sponsored messages on for every Telegram bot in the project the moment you click Save keys. If you would rather decide per bot first, untick it; nothing turns on until you say so.
That is the whole integration. No webhooks, no API calls, no code.
Step 3 — tune it per bot
Each bot has its own monetization settings, so a revenue bot and a support bot can behave differently. Open the bot's settings and switch to the Monetization tab. You will find:
- Sponsored messages — the on/off switch for this bot.
- Frequency — "at most 1 sponsored button per this many messages per contact." Ten is a sensible default; a chatty bot that sends dozens of messages per session can afford a lower number, a bot that only speaks once a day should stay conservative.
- Ad network — shows which installed ad module serves this bot (TomoAds, for now).
Click Save and the settings apply to the running bot within a few seconds — no redeploy, no republish. Flip the switch off and ads stop just as fast.
What your subscribers see
Here is a sponsored message in the wild: a normal bot reply with one extra button under it. The button label comes from the advertiser's campaign; the message above it is untouched.
That is the entire footprint of automatic mode. For many bots you can stop reading here: switch on, pick a frequency, done.
Manual placement: put the ad exactly where you want it
Automatic mode spreads ads evenly across everything the bot sends. Sometimes you want the opposite — one deliberate slot with great attention, like a daily digest, a results screen, or the end of a long answer. That is what the module's flow action is for.
In the flow editor, add an action to the block where you want the ad and pick Fetch sponsored message (manual placement) from the TomoAds module. The request key is already wired in from the module setup, so the action works out of the box. When it runs, it asks TomoAds for one ad and returns the result as outputs you can use in the rest of the flow: whether an ad was served, the ad text, the button label, and the click link.
The pattern that works well:
- Fetch the ad at the start of the block — for a digest, right before the digest message.
- Branch on the result with a condition: "ad text is not empty." Ads are not guaranteed — when there is no campaign to serve, you want a clean fallback, not an empty slot.
- On the true branch, send your digest message with the ad appended — insert the ad text and button link as variable chips from the variable picker (never type them by hand). On the false branch, send the same message without the ad section.
Because the fetch happens per contact at send time, every recipient gets a live, currently-running campaign — a digest sent to a thousand subscribers requests a thousand ads, which is exactly how the network expects impressions to be counted.
One rule of thumb: do not combine both modes on the same message. If a flow has a manual placement, the automatic mode does not know about it — its frequency counter only tracks its own buttons. Either keep automatic mode on and skip manual placements, or turn the switch off for that bot and place ads by hand where they earn the most.
FAQ
Will ads annoy my subscribers? The format is intentionally minimal — one button under a message the user asked for, capped at your chosen frequency. If you are worried, start at one ad per twenty messages and tighten from there while watching your unsubscribe numbers.
What kind of ads will my subscribers see? TomoAds is crypto-first, so expect campaigns from crypto and Web3 projects — a natural match for the crypto, trading, and Telegram-native communities where bot audiences are strongest. If no suitable campaign is running, the message simply goes out without a button.
What happens when TomoAds has no ad to serve? Nothing visible. The message is delivered without a button, and the bot simply tries again on a later message.
Can I monetize one bot in a project but not another? Yes. The module and key are shared per project, but the switch and frequency are per bot.
Do ads appear while I test my bot? No. Test runs never show sponsored messages, in either mode.
Where do I see earnings? In the TomoAds dashboard — FlowCastle handles serving, the network handles reporting and payouts.
Flip the switch
If your bot already has an audience, this is the rare monetization step that takes minutes: install the module, paste one key, choose a frequency. And if you are still building the audience, the marketing stack — broadcasts, drip sequences, goals — is how you grow the message volume that ads ride on. No bot yet? Start from a ready-made template and you can have something worth monetizing by tonight.