FAQ and Troubleshooting
This page is a lookup table, not a lesson. Find the message or the surprise you actually hit, read the short answer, and follow the link if you need the full story.
Accounts and sides
I am an advertiser — can I also sell?
Not on the same account. The two sides of the marketplace are mutually exclusive and are chosen once, and the choice is enforced by the database itself. Register a separate account to sell. See Choosing the channel-owner side.
I pressed Continue and got "You're already enlisted, and your role can't be changed."
Your account already has a side. There is no switch, no upgrade and no support request that changes it — the only way to use the other side is a separate account.
Do I have to link Telegram?
Everything on the website works without it, but you lose three things: instant verification for your listings (they all go to the manual queue), the booking notifications, and the 📊 Manage channel button — which is the only route in the product to your listing manager.
Does booking my own channel boost my stats?
No. A booking where the buyer and seller are the same account, or two accounts sharing a Telegram identity, pays out the escrow normally but earns no Standing, no reliability credit and no earnings total, and its review is dropped from your average.
Listings
Where is the listing manager? Nothing links to it.
Correct — nothing in the web interface does. The Manage listing button on your desk opens the pricing wizard instead. The only in-product route is the 📊 Manage channel button on the Telegram message you get when a listing is verified. Otherwise, append the listing's OFPL- id to https://onflowads.com/telegram/dashboard/paid-promotion/listing/ and bookmark it. See The listing manager.
"Add @OnflowAdsBot as an admin of that channel first."
The bot must be an administrator of your channel with the Post Messages right before anything can be verified. Add it in Telegram, then press Verify & add or Publish listing ✓ again.
"@OnflowAdsBot is an admin but is missing the “Post Messages” right."
Turn that right on in the channel's admin settings and verify again. Without it the platform cannot publish your booked ads — and give the bot Delete Messages too, because it also removes every post it published when the run ends.
The pin right is not needed for this. Ordinary placements are never pinned, so publication without it works perfectly. In a channel that right is Edit Messages of Others (there is no "Pin Messages" switch), and you need it for exactly one thing: switching on the Pinned for the whole campaign extra. See Prices and offers.
My channel was "Submitted for review" instead of going live.
Instant verification needs four things at once: a plan that includes it (Free never auto-verifies), the bot confirmed as an admin with posting rights, your own linked Telegram confirmed as an admin of the channel, and a stored subscriber figure that is not far above the live count. If any one fails, the listing drops to the manual queue and goes live once approved. Priority review · $5 moves it to the front. See Listing your channel.
I edited my live listing and cannot resubmit it.
A live listing re-enters verification once per cooldown, measured from its last decision: Free 15 days, Lite 10, Plus 7, Elite 5, Master 3, Ultimate none. The error names your next eligible date. A live slot auction on the channel blocks it too. Settings that live outside the wizard — lead time, blackouts, auto-accept, dynamic pricing, spotlights, sponsorship — save instantly and never trigger a cooldown.
My subscriber numbers changed and I did not touch anything.
Every 14 days a live listing's Telegram stats are re-pulled and overwritten with fresh measurements. A drop of 40% or more raises a public note on the listing and messages you. A failed read never overwrites good numbers, but three consecutive unreachable checks raise "Channel unreachable on re-verification — stats may be stale". See Listing your channel.
How many channels can I list?
Free 5, Lite 10, Plus 15, Elite 30, Master 60, Ultimate unlimited. Adding one past the ceiling is refused with a message naming your plan and its limit.
How do I share my channel with an advertiser who has no account?
Copy the short public link from Share this channel on your listing manager — https://onflowads.com/pc/ plus your channel's short numeric code. It opens for anyone, previews properly when pasted into a chat, and shows your measured numbers, rate card, rules and reviews with a Book a slot button.
It exists only while your listing is active, and there is no bidding on it. See Your public channel page.
Prices and offers
I picked "Same day" in the wizard and I am still not in "Available today".
Because the wizard's Lead time chips write a cosmetic turnaround label, not the booking gate. The control that matters is Booking lead time (2h / 12h / 48h) on the listing manager, and every new listing sits at 48 hours until you change it there. See Managing your availability.
"Apply suggestions" fills nothing in.
The suggestion panel is commentary rather than an autofill: its note and its surge reason are real and worth reading, and you then type your own numbers onto the rate card. See Prices and offers.
What is the "Pinned for the whole campaign" extra, and how do I sell it?
It is the one paid extra on Paid Promotions, and the only way a pin is sold here. Switch it on in the wizard's pricing step, under the four format rows. There is no price box: the rate is the platform's, the same on every channel — the ad is worth $5.00 a placement, the buyer pays $6.00, and $4.00 reaches you after our $1 fee on your side. The bot must already have the Edit Messages of Others right in your channel — the switch that grants pinning in a channel, inside Manage Messages — or the save is refused with "Our bot can't pin in @… yet."
When a buyer takes it, the platform pins the ad for the whole booked run and releases the pin at the end, on whichever delivery route you used. See Prices and offers.
My spotlight will not start.
Three usual causes: the listing is not live, you are inside your plan's cooldown (the panel names the date it unlocks), or your concurrent spotlight slots across all your channels are used up. A channel can also only run one at a time. See Prices and offers.
A buyer's price is lower than my rate card. Am I being shaved?
Check which kind of discount it was. Your own offers — a spotlight or a buyer perk — reduce both the charge and your payout, because they are your offer. Onflow Ads's own offers — the lifetime-funding volume discount, promo codes, bundle discounts — come out of the platform's own fee only and are floored at your payout, so they can never reduce what you receive.
Availability and bookings
Auto-accept is on but a booking is sitting in my New tab.
It did not qualify: the charge is below your floor, your withdrawable balance cannot cover the good-faith deposit, or your reliability is under 4.0. Nothing tells you it was skipped, the booking is still yours to accept by hand, and its 24-hour clock is running.
A booking never reached me at all.
Two of your rules are enforced on the server at checkout: a blackout day, and your booking lead time (the strictest one in a mixed cart wins). A third — prohibited topics — stops the buyer in their composer.
What happens if I ignore a request?
After 24 hours — or at the ad's go-live on a short-notice channel, whichever comes first — it auto-declines: the advertiser is refunded in full and your reliability drops by 0.30. Declining by hand is free — only silence costs. The one exception is a request you were never allowed to answer: while you are under review or below the floor, the platform declines it for you at once, with no penalty.
What does "📄 Get the post here" do?
It is the first button on the Telegram booking notification. Pressing it sends you the complete placement — the media, the caption exactly as it will be published, the buttons with their real destinations, the format, the quantity, the channel and the schedule — as a message in the same chat, so you can see what you are being asked to publish without leaving Telegram.
It decides nothing. Accepting and declining both happen on the website, through the second button. It only answers the Telegram account linked to that booking's owner. See Receiving, accepting and declining bookings.
I need more time to answer a request.
The clock — 24 hours, or the ad's go-live if that comes first — cannot be paused, and every decision is taken on the website rather than in the Telegram notice. There is no counter-offer to buy time with. If you cannot commit to the slot, decline: declining by hand is free, and only silence costs.
"Your reliability is X/10 — you need at least 4/10 to accept bookings."
Your score has fallen below the accept floor. Finish work already in flight; recovery then needs a clean stretch whose length depends on your worst recent penalty — 14 days after a ghost, 45 after an upheld fraud. While you are under the floor, any new request for your channel is declined for you immediately and refunded in full, and it is not counted as ghosting. See Delivery monitoring and your reliability.
The Accept button says I need to top up my wallet.
The booking asks for a refundable good-faith deposit your withdrawable balance cannot cover: 10% of the charge, on bookings of $50.00 or more, capped at $20.00, and it must come from real funds — promotional credit does not count. Top up, then accept. It comes straight back when you deliver.
Can I ask for more money instead of declining?
No — there is no counter-offer. Your rate card is the price, and the advertiser has already paid it into escrow when the request reaches you. Accept it or decline it; to charge more next time, raise your rates in the listing manager.
The advertiser cancelled after I accepted. Do I get anything?
No fee — and nothing is taken from you either. A cancellation after you accepted but before the ad was posted refunds the advertiser in full, returns your good-faith deposit and leaves your reliability untouched. You can cancel an accepted, unposted booking from your side on the same terms. A booking cancelled while still pending disappears with no effect on you.
Delivery
"The posting window has closed — this booking is being refunded."
You tried to mark a booking delivered after its window ended. Unposted bookings refund automatically at the close. Where the cause was yours it also costs 1.00 reliability and the good-faith deposit; where it was a platform or Telegram failure, neither applies. A 120-minute grace exists at each edge for clock differences.
"We couldn't publish your booked ad."
Telegram refused the publish — almost always a rights problem. The bot keeps retrying for as long as the window is open, so there is nothing to post yourself: restore its admin rights (Post Messages, and Delete Messages for the end of the run) and the next retry lands. If the window closes first, the advertiser is refunded in full, and where the failure was a rights loss on your side it counts against your reliability.
The platform posted my ad but could not pin it.
That can only happen on a placement that bought the pin. Telegram rejected the pin, usually because the bot has admin rights without Edit Messages of Others — the switch that grants pinning in a channel. Add the right: the monitor retries the pin on every pass, and a pin the platform failed to apply is recorded as the platform's fault — it can never become a flag against you.
Who unpins the ad at the end of the run?
Onflow Ads does. A placement that bought the pin is pinned by the platform at publication and unpinned by the platform when the run ends — and the post itself is removed by the bot in the same pass. You never touch it.
On every other booking the question does not arise, because nothing was pinned in the first place. No format includes a pin.
An ad in my channel now carries "advertisement via onflowads.com". Can I remove it?
Yes, by moving up a plan. Onflow Ads adds that one line under ads it publishes into your channel, and your own plan decides it — not the advertiser's. It is shown on Free, Lite and the earned Referral Premium status, and removed entirely from Plus upward. See The line under the ad.
It is a separate thing from your listing's own "Marks the post as an ad" setting; a buyer reading your public page sees the two stated separately.
Where did "Mark posted" go?
It is retired. The bot publishes every accepted booking itself and records the proof — link, message id, frozen creative — at publication, so there is no link to paste and no button to press. See Proof of delivery.
Can I edit the ad post after publishing it?
No. The bot published it and the bot removes it; the post must stay exactly as booked in between. Telegram's own edit signal is recorded on the proof trail and counts against you in a dispute. If something genuinely must change, agree it with the advertiser and go through support — never edit the live post yourself.
When can I delete the ad?
Never — and you never need to. The bot removes the post itself the moment its promised duration has fully run (24 hours for a 1h top · 24h feed placement, 48 for a 2h/48h, 72 for a 3h/72h, seven days for a native one). Deleting it yourself before then pauses your payout and costs 1.50 reliability; if you believe it must come down early, report the campaign instead.
Money
My payout says "Funds release automatically on …" with a date.
That date was fixed from your plan at the moment you delivered, and it never moves afterwards. The advertiser can release it sooner by confirming the post. You can also use Get it now once their review window has passed, for a flat 5% fee. Otherwise the Claim button appears on the date — and the release happens automatically anyway.
My payout is "on hold" or "paused".
One of four things: a dispute is open on the booking, the monitor flagged the placement, your wallet is frozen pending a review, or the payout crossed an identity-verification threshold. Each names itself; the funds are held, never lost.
"This payout crosses a verification threshold."
Your lifetime payouts reached a band: $500 requires basic verification (legal name and country, approved instantly), $5,000 identity verification, $25,000 enhanced. Complete the card at the top of your bookings queue. See Identity verification.
Part of my payout shows as a "retention hold".
That booking carried retention escrow: 20% of the payout stays held for 14 days from delivery — or until the rest of that payout releases, whichever is later, so the slice is never paid out ahead of the money it was held back from — and releases provided the placement was never flagged, refunded or disputed, and your channel has not shrunk below its size when you accepted. If the live subscriber count cannot be read at that moment, that half of the test is skipped rather than failed.
Why is my fee different on two bookings?
A rate is fixed onto each booking when it is priced and never repriced afterwards, so two bookings can carry different rates if your rate changed between them. The marketplace fee is the same on every plan — the standard rate is 9% — and the only other rate is the veteran rate, which you earn once one of your channels has completed 100 clean campaigns: from then on the veteran rate is 7% on every payout to your account. A reliability penalty restarts that count from zero (a penalty overturned on appeal restores it), so a booking priced after a penalty can be back at the standard rate; and a booking always keeps the rate it was priced at, even if the published rate changes later. Each card prints the exact rate applied to it.
I cannot withdraw even though I have balance.
Check four things: the amount meets the $5.00 minimum; the balance is withdrawable rather than refund or promotional credit; your wallet is not frozen for a review; and you have not used your plan's withdrawal requests for the month (Free 1, Lite 3, Plus 6, Elite 12, Master 30, Ultimate unlimited).
Monitoring and disputes
My reliability dropped 0.40 and I never deleted anything.
That is the exclusivity penalty, not a monitor flag. Every format sells an opening window in which your ad is the newest post in the channel — 60 minutes on a 1h/24h or native slot, 120 on a 2h/48h, 180 on a 3h/72h — and something else went up in your channel before it closed.
It costs 0.40 reliability and no money at all: the payout is untouched, no deposit is forfeited, and the ad keeps running. The notification names how many posts went up and how far into the window the first one landed. See Delivery monitoring.
I was flagged but the post is still up.
A flag needs two consecutive conclusive readings, so this is rare. The usual causes are the bot having lost access to the channel, or the submitted link pointing at the wrong message. Re-add @OnflowAdsBot as an administrator and contact support from the flag notification with the OFO-.
An advertiser opened a dispute. What should I do?
Nothing immediately. The review is arbitrated on records that already exist — the monitor's history, the measured delivery numbers and the signed proof archive. Your payout on that booking and your wallet are held while it runs. If the concern is rejected, everything proceeds, nothing is marked on your account, and the claimant loses 0.50 reliability instead.
How long does the wallet freeze last?
It is set for the 14-day dispute window and cleared the moment the concern is decided — on both outcomes. A review that resolves on day two ends the freeze on day two.
An old booking that already paid out was disputed.
The window runs 14 days from the post going live, which can be after payout. After 14 days the money is settled for good.
Auctions
Can I cancel an auction I started?
Yes, until the last 12 hours before it closes. Every live bid is refunded in full automatically and the slot stays yours. Inside the last 12 hours the auction is locked and will settle — though it still goes unsold if your reserve is not met. See Running auctions.
My auction sold — why do I still see a booking request?
The winning bid converts into an ordinary booking at the clearing price, and ordinary bookings go through your accept flow. Accept it to lock the sale in; from there it is monitored, escrowed and paid out exactly like a fixed-price placement — including the reliability cost of letting it sit unanswered.
Why can I not remove or re-verify a channel?
A live slot auction on it blocks both: removing would destroy bidders' escrowed money, and re-verification could change the slot they are bidding on. Cancel the auction first — every bidder is refunded — then do what you meant to.
Referrals
Where is the referral programme?
In your account section, at https://onflowads.com/account/referrals — the Referrals tab on your account page, not the Paid Promotions subnav. Every account already has a code; there is nothing to apply for.
What does referring someone earn me?
5% of every settled top-up a person you referred pays Onflow Ads, for as long as they keep topping up — paid as boost credit, which is spendable on Boost Metrics orders and never withdrawable. See Referral Programme.
How does someone use my code?
They do not type it anywhere. Share your /i/OFRF-… link; attribution happens automatically when they sign up through it. An unconverted click stays attributable for 90 days; once they sign up, the binding is permanent.
Can I refer myself with a second account?
No. It is caught at signup, and confirmed abuse costs you your referral links and a 2.00-point reliability penalty.