Is paying for a featured model spot worth it? I tried it so you don't have to!

Is paying to give your LoRA a featured slot worth it?

Two days ago I paid 577 buzz to get one of my models featured (14th place) as an experiment. The net me a featured slot yesterday. Was it worth the cost? While a sample size of one, I’ll give you my experience

Short answer: No. I got a mere 29 buzz back.
Long answer: Not in the slightest. It got only 69 generations (plus maybe another few between the minutes of getting featured and me taking note of the count) made with it. That 29 buzz is actually lower than many days it is NOT featured (the same model made 34 on the 3rd and 35 on the 6th)! Now there could be some effect where it introduced people to the model and they’ll continue to gen with it on future days, but that seems dubious. It wasn’t even my best performing model of the day

This is not a complaint. I spent the buzz FOR SCIENCE! knowing full well of the potential failure going in and was fully prepared to get nothing back. People have already tipped me more than I spent (thank you for that) so I'm perfectly "whole" anyways. The cover pic is just something I genned quickly to look eye catching.

From the rest of the data I have I can conclude the best way to earn buzz is to make loras intended to produce sexual content: The panties series (which were actually some of the easier LoRAs I’ve done: No cleaning needed beyond cropping) continue to be regular earners, and one of the big creators I’ve DMed with told me (as an incidental, initial contact was for something else) that putting such models in early access pays for everything else. The next best way is to make LoRAs for female characters who are currently popular and don’t yet have a (good) LoRA (basically seasonal anime/cartoons and new animated movies).

I’ve actually seen bigger usage spikes from having just used my LoRAs naturally and people appreciating the results enough to check what other resources I’ve used. For example after I posted this image to very positive reception (the degree of success surprised me for a relatively dumb joke and not that popular a LoRA, though I supposed with such a highly ranked user everyone checks out the gallery even if they want don't intend to use the model) the SKS LoRA I used got a large usage rate that netted me 108 buzz since then. I’ve also seen spikes in attention rate when I publish new LoRAs that use older ones in the gallery (I use my Gundam X Style LoRA whenever I make a new character LoRA and want a gallery post showing off the style compatibility, and the meme LoRAs I’ve made are great excuses to either dredge up some older character LoRAs or things I can populate the gallery of new ones with). You'll never make a model that won't be popular popular this way (no matter what I do with an obscure girl, she'll still be obscure), but you can give them a second wind

So yeah, don’t bother with paying for featured stats.