Internet spurs home-made cartoons

Zhou said revenue, most of which comes from reader payments, has trickled down into the pockets of contributors. But the website has to explore financing methods to assure more cartoonists are paid.

Youyaoqi said "100,000 Bad Jokes" has successfully raised 1.19 million yuan through crowdfunding, a collective effort of netizens to pool their money, via the Internet, to support producing cartoons.

Meanwhile, commercial advertisements are popping up in episodes, which has caused complaints among netizens. Some mocked a five-minute-anime that had three minutes of ads and two minutes of story.

Experts said the animation online platform lacks a mature business model so income from "embedding ads" is the only choice.

Gao Weihua, animation department director at the Communication University of China, said the Internet provides free access for individual creators, and offers alternatives from traditional patterns that are more costly and can be harder for works to be published.

However, supervision on the Internet is not perfect and producers should seek a proper business model, according to Gao.

Zhou Jingqi is confident of developing a ripe industry chain including animation-based games, saying the fledgling mobile Internet market has potential.

"We believe it will be able to work. We keep telling our colleagues that we mustn't give up," Zhou said.