Tip of the day!

How to promote your bitcoin business with few sats over LN

Use case:
  • you have a webshop, a brick and mortar business, you are a freelancer, a developer launching his new app, a new startup looking for audience, a company launching a new product/service
  • you want bitcoiners audience
  • you are using and accepting BTC/LN
  • you don't want to spend too much in big marketing campaigns on regular media channels
We have 3 options (for today):
  • LNTXBOT, telegram bot using LN, maintained by @fiatjaf
  • Amboss Billboard
  • large number of websites that offers you free advertising your business, bitcoin-only.
How to do it:

1. LNTXBOT

In Telegram, first of all you will need to have configure it using a @username, not just joined with your mobile number. If you want to keep more privacy and use a separate telegram account than your private account, no worry there's a solution for that too. You can use:
Once you have that account, add a @username to it to handle your Telegram use in a private way, only for your "commercial" stuff. Go to @lntxbot in Telegram and type /start, so in this way the bot will create the wallet/account for you. You can optionaly link that LN wallet to Zeus or Bluewallet apps in your mobile, for more handy use out of Telegram, as a regular LN wallet. LNTXBOT is just a LNDhub account. Is good also to keep it backed up in a safe place. There's no need to keep a large amount of sats in LNTXBOT, just enough for your regular use. Is a custodial account in the end.
Deposit some sats into your LNTXBOT wallet, through LN:
  • in Telegram, go to @lntxbot and type /invoice 10000 for ads
  • pay the generated invoice from any other LN wallet
Prepare your ad to be broadcast:
  • In @lntxbot chat, send as a regular message your promo
  • you can use text and images too, don't forget to add the URL link for your web or where people can read more/contact
  • Be wise, use a brief but good message that bring attention. You are paying for each character contained
  • Once you send it to @lntxbot, reply to the same message with the command: /sats4ads_broadcast_2000 --max-rate=600
where (2000 is the amount of sats you want to spend on this promotion, 600 is the max msats fee/char that users accept). Remember that the cost depends on how many users you want to receive this promotion. The cost of the promotion is paid per character with msats (millisats) /character. Do your calculations before sending the promotion. Done! In few moments you will receive a confirmation message from @lntxbot about to how many users was broadcast your ad and total final cost. LNTXBOT Users subscribed to sats4ads will receive your message and read it, taking their own cut of sats from what you paid. This is a simple wonderful way to promote things to bitcoin audience!
More commands to use the /sats4ads featrure: /help_sats4ads - general help /sats4ads_rates shows a breakdown of how many nodes are at each price level. Useful to plan your ad budget early /sats4ads_on_15 - activate (with a rate of 15 msats/char) that you can receive ads (visible only in @lntxbot chat) and be paid to read them

2. Amboss Billboard

If you have a LN node running (mobile or desktop) you can use the keysend feature from your node management app to send messages to the Amboss billboard. Here I wrote an extensive guide about how to post on Amboss

3. Various merchant list pages

If you want to have your bitcoin business promoted permanently in a list of businesses here are a selection of them:
  • CoinMap.org – physical and / or online stores with BTC, you can add your physical or web store in the list (Android app – iOS app)
  • LN Online Stores – online stores that accept BTC / LN, you can add your physical or web store in the list
  • Accepting LN – online stores with BTC / LN, you can add your physical or web store in the list
  • SpendABit – BTC merchant and product directory
  • BitcoinWide – map and merchant directory, you can add your business
  • BTCPay Server Merchants – merchants using BTCPay Server (a separate, proprietary type of server that processes all txs in BTC)
  • Spending Bitcoin – list of merchants of all kinds and from the world
  • Accepted Here BTC – list of online stores that accept BTC, you can add your physical or web store in the list
  • Cryptwerk – merchants list by types, you can add your store there
  • Agorist Market – P2P online market where you can publish your store / products
Good luck and may the Bitcoin be with you, accepting more bitcoins! Let's show to the whole world that IT IS POSSIBLE TO LIVE WITH BITCOIN!
ADDITIONAL Info - List of places to trade goods and services P2P with Bitcoin. (maybe @k00b will create a dedicated sub for marketplace ads on SN, separate from jobs. BTW, jobs can be extended also with workers offering their services too)
Feedback on the sms4sats: I tested one of my telegram numbers changed to the sms4sats one. Then the account is being limited. Probably lots of people are using this service for spamming ( Do not repeat my mistake, use it to make new accounts only)
Slentlink works nicely so far.
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Great feedback! I think the maintainer of sms4sats is an active user on SN but I can't remember his username now. Maybe he could see your feedback.
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Good information here, thanks for sharing
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