There’s a whole backstory to Geeks.co.uk that we think is quite interesting. More about that in a second. But here’s a short raison d’etre…

We know how hard it is to get into the creative industries – journalism is struggling for various reasons; as is the music industry. Creative writers are having to find new means to get their work out there, everyone’s a photographer these days, and even I know how to edit videos, so you have to be exceptionally good an, more importantly, get the right breaks.

Therefore, we have spent the last 18 months developing a website that has come to be read by six figures of people a month. And we’re not precious about it: our reason for being upon this earth is to share that platform with the aspiring young people we mention: to give them a byline, increase their portfolio, bolster their cred, and introduce them to the fangled world of media 2.0

We have had success in doing that and managed to get some writers into the big press, onto more salubrious jobs and we’re always ready with a kindly worded reference.

We’ve recently rebranded the site to corporatise (yep it’s a bit of a dirty word..) what we’re doing. Basically, it make us more attractive to advertisers and then we can actually practice what we preach: gainfully rewarding the best ‘unsigned’ talent on our pages.

We take all manner of contributions: music, photography, reviews, news, creative writing, classic journalism and features. We pay in kick backs, PR opportunities, free stuff and throwing you job opportunities when they hit our radar. Many of these are in London so we can even offer you free room and board for your interview travels because … well we know how skint you are.

That interesting story I alluded to: my name’s Ally Millar and I was a student journalist with a decent enough pedigree, who spent way too long out of work and sauntering around the mean streets of Glasgow picking up freelance jobs and hitting the pub a bit hard. I got a rather out-of-the-blue call from a famous guy who asked if I wanted to kick-start a web-magazine called Geeks.co.uk

I jumped at the chance and set to work on what was basically a faceless and boring tech blog working out of a windowless basement in Edinburgh. The site started to do quite well and was bought over by London firm 7thingsmedia.

A move to London ensued and all that came with it – learning the PR game, making contacts, gala openings, networking, film premiers – meant the site was plugged into the mainframe and we could start trying to make a difference. We started organising events that took place offline to bring our contributors together in real time and have been growing ever since.

We see ourselves as performing a service for people trying to surge ahead in the creative game, and will help in whatever way we can. There’s site inventory dedicated to almost all pursuits so get in touch, like us, Tweet us, love us and support us supporting you.

Cheers,

Ally – follow me on Twitter here or email ally[at] geeks.co.uk