Krista Madden

First set up Time Agency, representing hair and make-up artists working in the fashion and beauty industry 20 years ago. With a wealth of insider knowledge, working with experts in these industries then set up BeautyandtheDirt.com over 10 years ago as an independent website. This was the first indie, female and entertainment website in the UK and was hugely popular, covering only true and honest reviews of products and has maintained ‘tried and tested’ as a way of featuring brands.

Having built a good knowledge of working online and knew many other sites and blogs that were popular but unable to monetise on their own went about ‘hand-picking’ sites that went well together set up Handpicked Media. Just a year later, over 250 sites and blogs are now part of a growing collective who reach a total of 15 million page impressions, 5 million uniques in the UK. Working successfully with brands across female, male, culture, food and parenting; as each campaign is approached in a bespoke way and uniquely from a publisher’s perspective, this ensures good coverage that bloggers are keen to be involved in, which in turn works really well for the brands.