Dec 16 • Sally Burns

The Portal Collective vision, confirmed in numbers.

We're reaching a tipping point, created and held on a shoestring.
With nearly a year’s worth of data for The Portal Collective, I’ve been able to analyse it all and am pretty confident it’s confirming the vision 🌀❄️🕸️
  • We now have 450 users, increasing steadily per month - around 22%.
  • We have around 12 live offers from our Creators.
  • Creators make, on average, £400 a month per offer.
  • We have a global market, with Creators and Experiencers in the UK, Germany, Australia, Dubai, the US and Ireland to name a few. 
  • Of the 450 users, 10% are participants on 2 or more courses from different Creators.
This cross pollination of Experiencers has been delightful to track. To sit in one group and be inspired by another, to exchange and combine thinking and ideas in this way helps to navigate solutions in the complexity of these times.

But the most exciting thing to note - of the 450 users, 5% have gone on to become Creators.

With membership sites that pay ‘leaders’ and ‘visionaries’ to run courses on their platform, the growth sits with how many members they can sign up.

With the big players in the course creation platforms market, all the ‘success’ sits with the individual.

With The Portal Collective, we see Experiencers as Creators and Creators as Experiencers - because we are all Creators.

And then there is the data that I can’t plug into spreadsheets. Yet.

The practice of being in community together, what spaces with longer silences in-between is doing for our resilience and collective growth. The influence of others on our edges, available even from simply sharing an online space.

It is clear we are reaching a tipping point and growth like this could mean 300 new Creators by this time next year.

With the set up cost and the £45 a month Hosting fee, that’s looking pretty healthy for us as well as our Creators. 
But it has also cost a lot to get to this point. Both financially and emotionally. 

I have shared previously how difficult this build has been and the impact holding most of it has had on me, and in turn my family. 

To cover the tech costs, to patch together the technologies myself and the overheads required has meant little breaks, constant financial stress and an ongoing dance with the threat of burnout.

We also know the limitations and barriers to people becoming Creators right now - the upfront done for you cost currently required to have an offer created (and to keep the business running), the inability to apply their branding, the fact they can’t have a little tinker themselves and of course the limits to my time 🐌 

That’s why we have the design, wireframes and tech spec ready to build our own tool and platform.

These figures are great and they have been achieved with no paid marketing. None whatsoever.

That’s a great testament to the power of networking and community building.

 And also, imagine where we can go when people can create themselves and we can increase the marketing.

For now, we are clearly making those limitations work and I have been blown away by the support and positive feedback from both Creators and Experiencers on the platform. 

While this analysis is going to be used to secure the investment for the next stage, we would love for you to join us now in these exciting early stages. 

Whether it's a membership, a weekly live course, a workshop or a freebie, we have a package that can help you get your ideas out to a global audience.