Intro
(This guide was made mainly to point beginners to.) Civitai awards blue buzz (the site credit used for generating images) for completing daily tasks, which can be viewed by clicking your profile/buzz total on the upper right (you may need to refresh it to see your current progress accurately). The Civitai day rolls over at midnight GMT time (finding that in your timezone is a web search away. If you’re viewing this guide months from its writing and live in an area with DST, be aware that GMT is not DST adjusted and the rollover will be an hour earlier or latter), which instantaneously resets all daily tasks all at once. Once you know what you're doing, you can easily get everything done in a few minutes.
Daily tasks to gain blue buzz
By claiming it daily in the Image generator: 25 Buzz
Simple. Open on-site generator and claim it. If not claimed at the end of the day you lose it.
For the first image post you make each day: 25 buzz
This is as simple as making a new image and posting it. If you’re here for the generator, you’ll already have made images to post. If you normally do local generation, your images can also be uploaded and posted. Certain external online generators are also eligible for upload, though these need to be manually tagged with their origin and generation information (I’m not entirely sure on which are allowed. I think everything listed in the Tools tab is fine.).
If you used an additional resource (such as a LoRA) to generate your image, consider posting your image to that resource’s gallery instead generally posting it. You still get the 25 buzz for posting your first image a day, but the creator of that resource will also get 50 buzz the first time each user posts this way to a model page (That’s per user, per resource, so you posting to three different pictures to three different models by the same user gets them 150 buzz. This cap does not reset at the end of the day.).
For feedback given on the generator: 4 each, max 10 instances (total 40).
This is as simple as going to your feed or queue (both work) in the on site generator and hitting the thumbs up or thumbs down icon as appropriate. I’m not sure what it actually does on the site’s end, but you get buzz for it. If you generate locally but want the buzz (most likely because you’ve got enough system power to generate but not enough to train a LoRA and are trying to get the 500+ needed for that) your best (though least personally fufilling) option is to generate SD1.5 based image at low settings, which will cost a single buzz for a net 30 buzz.
If you use the generator regularly, remember that images older than 30 days are deleted. I give feedback on my oldest images first (I’m not sure if there’s a quicker way to get to the bottom than just focusing on it and holding the end key on your keyboard), though if you didn’t already have a backlog of images from before this expiration policy you can just rate them as they are generated.
For each unique reaction you give: 2 each, max 50 instances (100 total)
This one is easy, but also most time consuming (unless you’re generating to rate). Just hit a reaction button on 50 images. The tricky part is finding 50 images you want to react to. There are a few ways we can do this, and the choice is yours.
Answer his questions Go to Images section, sort by newest
This will get you almost* every image that has been posted to Civitai recently and isn’t excluded by your filters, which is guaranteed to have new images you haven’t reacted to before unless the site is acting up. You can also do this for a single image tag, but finding a (non-porn) tag that is actually relevant to you instead of generic like “blue eyes” is a tricky proposition.
Pros: Always has new images, sheer variety, easy
Cons: Even if you’ve laboriously set up your content filters, expect to see a bunch of utterly repulsive stuff because there’s plenty of disgusting fetishes out there you’ve never eve heard of and the auto-label isn’t perfect.
Give him the info Check the galleries for contests and daily challenges
Pros: Least likely to contain a disgusting fetish (challenges have max allowed rating of PG, contests have max of PG-13), will have lots of images to rate
Cons: Very samey, unlikely to introduce you to useful new resources. Not always a contest going on. No way of sorting contest galleries.
Fill out the forms yourself Browse LoRAs by newest, check their galleries
Go to the LoRA section and sort by newest, then check the galleries of resources that interest you.
Pros: Will (by definition) introduce new resources, sorts images, and least likely to encounter disgusting fetish in bulk (most likely contained to dedicated LoRA pages).
Cons: Slowest method on its own, images will be very samey, because the resources the creator will still be working out what settings work the best for it (they may even be stuck with the sample pictures generated automatically during training at low settings) and the images won’t be optimal.
Other possible ways of finding images
You can also check public image collections for a pre-curated list of images you can react away on. Unfortunately even if there is an active image collection to your tastes, actually finding any active public collection is nearly impossible on Civitai since the only way to find one is seeing it in a user’s profile, or someone linking you to it (you can’t even see what public collections an item you’re viewing is included in). If you’re established there’s also, you’ll start getting people following you, some of them have plenty of images posed you can rate, but that’s not really applicable to a beginner’s guide.
*Certain images need to be approved by mods before showing up to general users. The two main categories are those the auto-labeler suspects include children (which is essentially random with non-realistic images) and those posted to a model that disallows NSFW content that the auto-label thinks are PG-13 or higher.
For first 3 people that you follow each day: 10 each, max 3 instances (30 total)
You can follow accounts from their profile, or from the page on a picture/resource they posted. The easiest way to find people is to do it while you’re looking for images to rate. You do not lose this buzz if you latter unfollow the account, though following them again on a latter day will not only not get you buzz, but will lose a daily possible instance of buzz for following someone (possibly a site bug)
Beyond the Daily Tasks
There’s a few more ways to get buzz for generations beyond the 200 something net daily tasks give you
Making 20+ 10+ entries to a Daily Challenge
Official explanation
https://civitai.com/articles/9196/introducing-daily-challenges-on-civitai
Pro: It’s a solid chunk of buzz, can double up with generating images to post/give feedback on,
Cons: Generation costs eat into the earnings, you can not get a net positive buzz count if the daily challenge uses Flux, the auto-label may erroneously think an image is above the max allowed age rating and take you under the needed 20, actually generating the images is tedious, there’s a delay on the award.
Edit: As of Dec 13, 2024 This now requires only 10 entries but awards only 200 buzz (a net of 180 with low settings for an XL based model). This is now much easier to do, but less rewarding (but still rewarding).
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Official explanation.
https://civitai.com/articles/7012/earn-more-free-buzz-just-by-browsing-the-site-with-ads
Official Newsletter
The official Civitai Newsletter includes 100 buzz whenever it goes out,. (Thanks to ravemry9 for this tip)
Going for Gold?
The key to getting image reactions is to have a lot of images for a variety of topics, and to have them in new/relatively popular resources so people can actually find them (Civitai is extremely limited in ways for users to find old content short of searching for it explicitly). There’s not really any way to get it consistently beyond having lots of good quality content posted regularly. Getting buzz from having your images added to a collection is incredibly unlikely (the majority of stuff getting collected is models, often for categorization). The best advice I can give you in light of that is to make images that showcase new models well (once you’ve worked out a prompt skeleton, putting new character models in it is easy) and to use non-character models in unexpected ways (using models intended for NSFW pics in perfectly PG or PG-13 ways is a personal favorite.).
Also if you had to tweak a prompt to get something quite right, don’t be afraid of posting your prior failed gens in the post alongside it: It helps others learn from your mistakes if they can look at the prompt and see what you had to change (did you need a particular keyword added? Perhaps you had to remove calls for lower body clothing from the prompt to get a pose working.), and the failed gens are often hilarious.
The real source of yellow buzz though is having LoRAs people use and a good gallery showcasing them. I have a dedicated guide for how to make a LoRA. I warn you that LoRAs tend to be rather swingy in buzz generation: Even having been in top 200 creators it’s clear that while some few LoRAs will earn their training cost back relatively quickly (2 months) and keep earning, others (even good ones that get plenty of downloads) won’t ever. Make LoRAs because you want them to exist, not because you think they’ll generate buzz.
Thanking me
If you want to thank me for this guide, give it a reaction and bookmark it. This not only gets me buzz (especially the second) but also gets me points on the leaderboard for best article writers. The best way to thank me is to use some of my resources for your images and post the results to their page: I've got lots of different kinds of LoRA you can use.