We're halfway through another year! We've been working hard over the last several months to follow the Path to Sustainability for us and creators that we designed with input from the community in January. We've already rolled out a few of the things we outlined in our plan and over the next few weeks we plan to release three new features that I believe will empower a true creator economy on Civitai and allow anyone to earn as we move towards a future driven by AI generated content.
We're presenting them before they're done so that creators can prepare and so we can get your feedback as we continue to work on these features. As always, we invite you to carefully review our plans, to share any input you have regarding these features so that we can calibrate things.
The changes we made this week to re-balance rewards and address bot Buzz farming was in preparation for these upcoming features that allow more creators to get paid real money for the Buzz they've earned.
Paying creators for the Buzz they earn
Currently, members of our Creators Program can get paid $1 USD for every 1,000 Buzz they bank. We've been running the program with a small batch of creators to make sure that things work.
Soon we'll open up the Program to include anyone that meets the program requirements (for example, residing in a supported country) and dropping the Follower requirement so that anyone can earn.
Here's an example:
FutureKat is a new creator without many followers, but has released a few LoRAs that are really popular. With the new ability to be compensated for images that are generated with her resources, she's earned 120k Buzz over the course of the month. She applies for the Creators Program and provides the necessary information to unlock her access to banking Buzz. She Banks 100k Buzz and gets paid $70 for her Buzz after the 30% Civitai platform fee.
Earn buzz when your resources are used in the generator
Currently, members of our Creators Program earn 10 Buzz for every 1,000 images that are generated using their resources.
Soon we'll level up this system and opening it to all creators. Here's how it will work:
25% of Buzz earned in the generator will be given to the creators of the resources used
25% of the Buzz Creator Reward will go to the creator of the base model used in the generation
75% of the Buzz Creator Reward will be split among the creators of all resources used
An optional Creator Tip will be included in the cost of generation. It will start at 25% but can be raised or lowered by people generating. In most cases this will only increase the cost of generation by 1-2 Buzz.
The tip is split among the creators of the resources used
Here's an example:
BuzzDaddy spends 25 Buzz (20 Buzz + 5 Buzz tip) generating 5 pictures of his beautiful Buzz farm using his favorite SDXL model from MicroJim along with an "Add Detail" and "Beautiful Landscapes" LoRA from FutureKat.
Now that Creator Compensation needs to be split:
Tip: 5 Buzz (25%)
MicroJim: 2 Buzz (for 1 of the 3 resources used 34%)
FutureKat: 3 Buzz (for 2 of the 3 resources used 66%)
Creator Reward: 5 Buzz (25%)
MicroJim: 1 Buzz (for providing the base model 25%)
MicroJim: 1 Buzz (for 1 of the 3 resources used 34%)
FutureKat: 3 Buzz (for 2 of the 3 resources used 66%)
Total Creator Compensation: 10 Buzz
MicroJim: 4 Buzz
FutureKat: 6 Buzz
Give early access to your biggest fans for Buzz
Currently, members of our Creators Program earn 10 Buzz for every user that downloads their model while it's in early access.
Soon we'll give power to the creators to choose the price of Early Access for generation and/or downloading. Here's how it will work:
Creators that have demonstrated quality contributions to the community will unlock the ability to offer Early Access.
When Early Access privileges are unlocked, a creator will start with the ability to do 3 days of Early Access, but as their contributions grow, they will unlock additional days with a max of 15 days.
Creators can set an Early Access unlock price for Generation and Downloading separately
Here's an example:
MicroJim has been cooking up the latest version of his SDXL model "PsAIchonaut v7" and he thinks it's ready for feedback from the community. He posts v7 as Early Access to his Psychonaut model with a Generation unlock price of 1,000 Buzz and a Download unlock price of 5,000 Buzz. As a prolific creator he has unlocked the ability to do 15 days of Early Access so he sets his unlock date to 15-days from now.
BuzzDaddy get's a notification that MicroJim has just posted "PsAIchonaut v7" and can't wait to try it out since MicroJim has been talking about the dramatic improvements to v7 for a few months. Since BuzzDaddy primarily generates on Civitai, he opts for the Generation unlock for 1,000 Buzz. After generating several images, he decides that since v7 is so good, he wants to download it so he can use it in his favorite workflow to make some videos, so he pays 5,000 Buzz for the Download unlock and stylizes the latest videos of his wife BuzzBae dancing so that he can harvest the sweet Buzz rewards.
During the 15-day Early Access period, MicroJim earned 3 Million Buzz all of which he can take to the Buzz Bank.
Important notes:
After the Early Access period (max 15 days), the resource will be Published and available to everyone for free
To avoid people removing and reuploading something after the Early Access period, we assess the hashes of the files associated with the model. If this is abused through hash manipulation, the individual will have their Early Access ability revoked.
Buy space within feeds to get more attention for your resources
Currently, it can be really hard to break into the scene with a growing number of creators every day and a constant stream of resources, images, and videos, it can be easy to get missed.
Soon we're going to be introducing Sponsored Spaces, blocks on the homepage and within feeds where creators can pay Buzz to have their resource or content featured. Here's how it will work:
Option A
Sponsored Spaces (a card the size of a model or image card in feeds) will be placed on the homepage and in the model, image, video, and article feeds.
Creators can bid Buzz to have their resource or content shown to set number of people a specific number of times over a period of time.
When a bid is placed, the Buzz will stay locked in the bid until it's spent or the creator cancels their bid.
Creators can target a specific Sponsored Space or to just appear in any space on either the homepage or a feed.
Creators can target appearing near content with specific tags or nsfw levels.
We'll prioritize the highest bids and ensure we don't show the same people the same thing more times than the creator specified.
Option B
Sponsored Spaces (a card the size of a model or image card in feeds) will be placed on the homepage and in the model, image, video, and article feeds.
Creators can target a specific Sponsored Space or to just appear in any space on either the homepage or a feed.
Creators can bid Buzz to have their resource shown in a specific space for 24 hours and can bid for multiple days at a time.
When a bid is placed, the Buzz will stay locked in the bid until it's spent or the creator cancels their bid.
The highest bidder has their content shown in the space.
Let us know which option you like better by taking this survey
Here's an example:
FutureKat uses the 20k Buzz she didn't bank to have her latest LoRA featured in a sponsored space so that she can attract more people to use it.
MicroJim uses some of his Buzz earnings to feature his "PsAIchonaut v7" model that is in Early Access in a spot on the homepage so that more people are aware of his latest release.
We've still got some work to do on these features, and I'm hoping that we can release them all at the same time since the various features come together to create a more cohesive whole. I'm excited to hear what you all think about the plan and hope it's clear how much we care about creating a space for creators in this ecosystem to find a sustainable way to continue contributing to the development of open-source AI.
Open-source sustainability has been a recurring issue in the open-source software world and I'm hoping it's something we can solve early in the development of the open-source AI space.
Thanks for taking the time to read this update. Please take our survey and leave a comment to share your thoughts.