how to level up steam gifts

Long story short: give games that weren't available for free.

Create giveaways, the first giveaway you make will bump you to level 1, each subsequent giveaway will increase your CV and when you reach a certain CV you'll level up (all the way up to lvl 10).

If you pay attention, in the giveaway creation screen there's a helpful message right under the box where you input the name of the game that says:

* Reduced value towards your contributor level.
** No value towards your contributor level.

So if you see a ** next to a game, it will not help you level up. That's because those games have been free or massively given away at some point, and those are set to give 0 value towards your level; it wouldn't be fair to let people stock up on free keys and then "farm" them to get free levels.

I see you've given away 35 games so far so I get how you'd be confused at the fact that you're still level 0, the reason for that is that all of those are on the "no value" list.

I think you reach level 11 when you give 50 free games. So keep it up.

You must have looped all the way around and back to Lvl 0.

Read the FAQ and guidelines in the help section. The answer to this and most questions you'll come up with are there. Also, there's the search bar in the left where you can see the other times this and other questions have been asked.

Games that have been given away for free don;t count as having contribution value (CV) for the level up.