How to use GramDirectory
This page answers two questions: what the service is for and what to press. No long words. Everything here works today; what does not work yet is said plainly — there is a section for it at the end.
What GramDirectory is for
For an owner of a Telegram channel we do three things.
1. Honest numbers about channels. We read public posts ourselves and compute reach, engagement and posting frequency — we do not ask owners and do not take their word for it. You see where you stand among similar channels, and an advertiser sees what they are paying for.
2. Draft posts. You give a couple of thoughts — you get a finished post. Edit it into your own words and send it to your channel in one tap.
3. Readers and advertising. Post swaps with neighbours on your topic, a shared niche folder, and — once the channel grows — selling ads through us.
What to do the first time (about ten minutes)
Step 1. Sign in. The only way in is the Telegram bot @GramDirectorycom_bot. There is no password and you do not need to create one.
Step 2. Answer the short questionnaire — topic, language, city. We use it to pick your neighbours and your post topics. You can change the answers later in Settings.
Step 3. Connect your channel. In the cabinet paste the channel link (the whole https://t.me/… is fine — easier than typing the name out), add our bot as an admin of the channel and press “Verify”. The bot checks that you are an admin there.
- It did not work — the request stays. Add the bot and press “Verify” again.
- If you want to publish posts from the service, tick “Post messages” when granting the bot its rights. People forget this one often, and then we say so plainly instead of failing silently.
- Your channel is not in our catalogue yet? It goes into a queue — we look at such channels overnight, and in the morning it is there.
Step 3 can wait. Draft posts and niche scouting work without a connected channel.
How to make a post
The Content tab. The whole route is written at the top; below it are three ways to get a draft. You can mix them: every result lands in the same list of drafts at the bottom of the page.
Way 1. From your talking points. Write your thoughts as they are, in your own words — a list or a single line. Press “Make a draft”. You get a post of up to 3500 characters in the language you wrote your points in.
Way 2. Topics for your niche. The “Suggest topics” button returns eight topics, each with a line on why it fits right now. Like one — press “Make a post from this topic” and it drops into the talking-points field.
Way 3. From another channel. Name a channel you like — then either “a post in that manner” (we write about your points in its tone) or “rewrite their post” (a retelling of one specific post).
The easy way to pick a donor is from the niche scout: every channel there has a “Use as donor” button, and one link brings you back to Content. We work from posts saved during our catalogue pass — we do not enter the channel itself, so only the beginning of each saved post is available. Each post shows its view count, and you can order the list by views to see what works for that channel. Posts from the last two days are marked “still accruing” — it is too early to compare their views with older ones.
From here all three are the same. The draft appears at the bottom of the page, and a line right under the button says so. You can edit the text in the card — that costs nothing. The “Publish to channel” button sends it to your subscribers: we ask again and name the channel, because afterwards the post can only be deleted inside Telegram. Pressing it twice makes no duplicate — it shows the link to the post that already went out.
An image for the post. Send a photo to our bot in one message captioned “image” — it shows up in the cabinet next to every draft, and you pick which image goes to the channel with the post. Telegram itself keeps the file; we only remember a reference to it. One detail: a Telegram image caption is at most 1,024 characters. A shorter text goes out as one message, the image with the text underneath; a longer one as two — the image first, the text next. The card says so in advance, before you press.
What it costs. Free right now: 20,000 characters a month — around twenty posts. The balance is always printed next to the button. If the engine refuses to write or breaks down, nothing is charged.
How to see where you stand
The Analytics tab.
Channel history — subscribers, reach, engagement and frequency by day. It starts on the day we first scanned the channel: Telegram gives nobody subscriber counts for the past.
Niche scout — twenty channels you compete with: their movement over a month, the middle of the niche and your place in it. Neighbours are picked by topic and size. If there are no channels of your size in the niche at all, we say so and still show the list — but we name it honestly.
You can switch the niche in the selector: look at an adjacent topic without changing anything about your channel.
How to get your first readers
The Growth tab, while the channel is small.
Newcomers’ basket — channels under 500 subscribers swap posts one to one, with no reach arithmetic and no commission. Press “Join” and you get a list of neighbours of your topic and size.
Niche folder — if you opt in, your channel joins a shared Telegram folder for your topic. A person adds it in one tap — all channels of the folder at once, yours included. At least three channels of your topic and language are needed.
⚠️ The basket takes those who publish. At least three posts in the last 30 days and no gap longer than two weeks — otherwise a neighbour swaps with nothing. If your channel went quiet, start posting and it comes back to the basket on its own; the screen says so plainly instead of showing nothing.
⚠️ You still post the swaps yourself for now: we have not started publishing on your behalf (see the last section).
How to sell advertising in your channel
Settings → tick “I sell advertising” and set prices per format. The channel then appears in the list of sellers, and the price shows in its catalogue row, where advertisers see it. Requests arrive on the Advertising tab, and so does the haggling: accept, decline or name your own price.
⚠️ Money does not pass through us yet — see below.
Ask the bot instead
If you would rather not read a page, the same answers live in the bot itself — @GramDirectorycom_bot, one command per question. The list opens with the “/” button in the chat:
/help— what the service is and what it does;/channel— how to connect your channel;/post— how to write a post and send it to your channel;/ads— advertising and swaps with your neighbours;/free— what it costs.
⚠️ The bot answers in Russian: the rest of it speaks Russian too, and one half-translated bot would be worse than an honest one. This page is the English version of the same answers.
What the service does NOT do yet
So that you do not wait for it:
- No scheduled publishing. There is one button — “Publish to channel” — and it sends the post immediately. Publishing by date and time does not exist.
- No publishing of swaps and ad deals. A deal is recorded and calculated, but the bot will not place the post in the other channel and will not hold the money.
- No payments. The pricing page exists, but the launch is free and there is nowhere to pay yet.
- No digests sent. You can subscribe; no issue has gone out yet.
- No new channels added to the catalogue right now — sorting new channels is temporarily switched off; metrics of existing ones are counted nightly.
Common questions
Why does the bot need admin rights? To confirm the channel is yours and to publish your posts when you press the button. It cannot read other people's conversations or post anything without your action.
Why does the scout show channels outside my topic? A machine picks the topic from the description and the posts, and it makes mistakes. Fix it in Settings — we never overwrite your choice after that. And in the scout itself you can ask about any topic without changing your channel.
Why does my channel have no history? It starts with our first scan. We can restore the reach of old posts afterwards and mark such data separately; subscriber counts for the past do not exist for anyone.
Why is my channel not in the catalogue? Either it never reached us — claim it and we will queue it — or it did not pass screening.
How is this better than just asking a chatbot? Because here the text is the middle of the road, not the end: it goes to your channel by button, and next to it sit measured numbers of your neighbours, topics from a live niche and the manner of a specific channel. A chat with a model has seen neither your niche nor the numbers in it.