About

Subject:
The primary focus is Subprime loans across varied markets. “Subprime” essential refers to financial products that are designed for people with a poor credit history. There are several markets investigated such as “Guarantor”, “Logbook”, “Payday” etc.

Audience:
We are based in Manchester, England. The bulk of the products discussed here are available to UK residents only. There has been some international coverage, but this has been limited since pretty much all of our visitors are local and most of our Google traffic is the same (that has a lot to do with the “.co.uk” domain extension).

Branding:
Rather than using some generic keyword domain, the idea was to create a memorable and recognisable identity. Being born in the 80s and loving the movies and music of this era, one of the initial characters that sprung to mind was Pat Morita’s Kesuke Miyagi from The Karate Kid (1984). The idea really is just to let the legend live on.

Development:
We registered with Go Daddy, built the site on the WordPress platform, for hosting we use Hawk Host and StatCounter is used for analytics/tracking.

Performance:
Our top traffic day to date took place on Tuesday the 10th June 2014.

Progress:
At this time in (Phase-1) the content is being built up as much as possible. This has primarily started out with direct online lenders (131) and then a portion of high street-only lenders and brokers have followed. We have also compiled various lists. If you glance within the “Guides” page you will see a much wider spread of topics (usually related to subprime lending in some way). There has been around 300 posts so far, but the aim is to get to 500 or 1000. After this time (Phase-2) will mostly be about updating and improving all of the existing content. Even now, we have started working through some of the older posts to check for errors and to update any service changes.

USP:
On most comparison/review websites, you tend to find a small group of lenders featured with an attached banner for each. Miyagi Loans has took a unique approach. This is essentially to cover as much of the market as possible. We don’t attach banners for each company. In fact, we only make one single recommendation. An early approach taken has been to compile performance data that is attached below each single post. This primarily includes the current top prices within each sector. These rankings show pricing examples (and overall daily rates to 3 decimal places). This is joined by for instance the current top 5 Trustpilot rankings (Money category) and the top 5 lenders with the highest Facebook fan total. Updates are ran each month. If you glance down the left hand side of the page you will also see the lender lists and the 2 most popular companies within each sector. These rankings are measured by the total number of introduction post visits. Essentially, the aim is to create a large informational hub that provides value, with tons of detailed information in one single place.

If you have any suggestions or questions then do get in contact at any time through the contact form (or via Twitter).