Take two. We shared an earlier version of this, you gave us a lot of feedback, and we listened. Here's a rundown of what changed and our thank-you for it: Creator Compensation Stays. Everything below is the Creator Program as it stands today.
TL;DR: Here's how you earn as a creator on Civitai. You earn every time someone generates with your models - that's the baseline for everyone. On top of that, you get real tools to earn more and control your pricing: set your own licensing fees, sell access to your models, run your own shop (rolling out to everyone soon), and manage it all in the new Creator Studio.
How you earn from your models
When someone generates with your model, you earn from it. Generator tips flow to you as well. That's the baseline for every creator, with nothing to set up - publish your work and it earns.
Everything below is optional, and it's there to give you more control and more ways to earn on top of that baseline.
Set your own licensing fee
You can set a fee that you earn every time someone generates with your model.
It's opt-in. Set a fee and you earn that fee instead of your share of base compensation and tips on that model; leave it alone and you keep earning the standard way.
It's fully reversible. Remove the fee anytime and the model goes right back to earning base compensation and tips.
Fees are fractional, so you can price for volume. Suggested starting points: around 1 buzz per image for base models, around 1 buzz per 10 images for LoRAs. These are just suggestions - the number is yours.
How much you can charge scales with your membership tier, so higher tiers can price higher.
How stacking works
A fine-tune's fee adds on top of the base model's fee. If Anima charges 5 buzz per image and you set your fine-tune at 1, a generation with your fine-tune costs 6 buzz total - 5 to the Anima creator, 1 to you. Everyone who contributed to the result gets paid.
Sell access to your models
Set a price for access to a model - for generation, download, or both.
Instead of limiting how many models you can put up for sale, we cap how much you can charge, scaled by your tier. (Free accounts may still have a limit on how many models they can list at once - we're finalizing that.)
If your membership ever lapses, your prices simply drop to the free-tier cap. Your models stay yours and stay behind their access - they never become free or public. You keep your whole catalogue at a lower price until you renew.
Timed early access works the way it always has: set while publishing, scaled by your creator score, no membership required.
The Creator Studio
One home for everything you earn from, and the numbers behind it.
See your earnings, broken out by source - generation compensation, tips, access sales, and cosmetic sales - and over time.
See your analytics - generations using your resources, downloads, follower counts, and how your models are actually being used.
Set and bulk-edit your licensing fees across many models in one action.
Manage access - early-access and paid-access, at a glance.
The Studio and its analytics are open to every creator, so you can always see how your work is doing. (Cashing out your earnings runs through the Creator Program, but seeing them is open to all.)
Your own Creator Shop
A real storefront on your profile - open to Creator Program members today, and rolling out to every creator soon.
Custom cosmetics you design and submit - badges, decorations, profile backgrounds, avatar frames. You keep 70% of each sale.
Your models show up alongside them when you flip the toggle.
Merch - physical print-on-demand goods you design - is coming as a fast-follow.
A hub to browse the whole community's cosmetics is on the way, too.
Spend buzz toward membership
You'll be able to put buzz you've already earned toward a membership's perks - a way in that routes around payment barriers. (This unlocks the perks, not the monthly buzz a paid membership includes.)
What a membership gets you
Membership is how you earn more: higher fee and price caps, buzz banking and payouts, the higher tiers, and the full set of Creator Program benefits. The essentials - earning from your models, setting a fee, and seeing your analytics - are open to everyone.
Thank you
You've carried this platform with your models for years, and this program exists to make that pay off. We'll keep building it with you, in the open. We can't wait to see what you do with it.