Who can qualify

Demohour.com is China's first and largest crowd-funding website, but there are some rules.

To make sure that the projects on demohour.com are inspiring, He and his colleagues have set some standards. For example, they won't accept a project initiated for the creator's pleasure only.

"We won't allow a project, say, to raise money for the creator's honeymoon in Europe even if people are willing to pay for it," He says website managers will help verify the creator and the project's credibility.

It's common for the project creator on the website to give supporters something in return. It can be a postcard, T-shirt or dinner together with the creator. It can be anything but money or shares of stock, which could make the fundraising illegal.

According to the latest data available, demohour.com had selected 318 projects out of about 5,500 applicants by July. Altogether, 150 of the 318 chosen achieved their funding goals, raising a total of nearly 3 million yuan ($481,370). In comparison, over $350 million has been pledged to fund more than 30,000 creative projects since the launch of US-based kickstarter.com in 2009.

"Besides the gap in quantity, I have also noticed that we have fewer all-rounders in China who are good at not only coming up with creative ideas but also selling them," He says.

Zhao Xiaozhou, who reached only 6 percent of the funding goal of his Demo Hour project to raise money to support his father's paper-cutting art, now realizes the importance of adjusting his promotion of an old art to make it appealing for the young users of a crowd funding website. "For example, we could have designed patterns of Santa Claus because young people enjoy Christmas and might be interested in buying some," Zhao says.

Zhao emphasizes that he wasn't sad about his failure in achieving the funding goal because he also made friends with supporters and gained motivation from them to preserve the art.

"I will try to launch more projects on a crowd funding website in the future with a better promotion strategy." Zhao says.