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The annual roadworthiness test for cars over three years old is an essential safety measure, but it can throw up some unpleasant surprises. Fortunately, there are some simple checks that you can undertake before the test to boost the chances of your car passing.

Let there be light

It’s always a good idea to make sure your lights are working. Checking them before you take the car for a test only takes a few minutes, and the cost of a bulb could save you from a failure.

Wash and wipe

Your windscreen wipers and washers are another simple thing to check. If your wiper blades are worn or smearing, you can easily replace them yourself; blades are available from most accessory shops. Make sure the washer bottle is topped up and the jets are properly adjusted.

Check your tyres

Having your tyres properly inflated ensures that your car handles well and aids fuel economy. You should also check the tread for wear. There should be at least 1.6mm across the width of the tyre. Modern tyres have wear indicators built in that show up as a bar across the tread when the tyre reaches the limit. If you are in Gloucester MOT garages like swiftfit.uk.com/gloucester-mot can advise on whether your tyres are safe.

Check the oil

Having the right level of oil in your engine is vital to your car’s smooth running. Always make sure the car is on level ground when you perform this check. Pull the dipstick out, wipe it clean, reinsert it and then pull it out again. The oil level should be between the Minimum and Maximum marks.

Clean plates

Make sure that your number plates are clean and not damaged or cracked. There are rules concerning the shape and style of plates, what extra symbols they can display, the font used and the spacing of characters. You risk your car failing the MOT if it does not comply with these requirements.

Sounding off

Finally, make sure that the horn works. If it does not beep when you press the button, it will lead to a MOT failure. Horns are usually located behind the grille at the front of the car, and a failure to work can be something as simple as a dirty connection.

Internet marketing is one of the fastest-growing and profitable businesses today. It is an excellent way for anyone to start a small business with little investment, no overhead, and high profit margins. Anyone can get up and running with an online business in hours. Sounds like an easy way to make money, doesn’t it? Compared to other offline small business ventures, it is.

Yet internet marketing failures still vastly outnumber those who have succeeded in internet marketing. For every story you hear of someone making $10,000 a month at internet marketing there are hundreds of untold stories of those who failed to make a profit or only made a few dollars and then quit. Why do so many fail when the potential to succeed is high?

1. Failure to plan – No matter what type of business you are running you need a business plan with well-defined goals. What are your short-term and long-term goals? What steps do you need to take to meet those goals? Write out your plan and review it frequently. You are running a small business. Treat it as one.

2. Failure to work the plan – So you already have a business plan? Are the following it? A plan means nothing if you don’t follow it. Work the plan every single day. Revise it if necessary but don’t detract from it.

3. Making goals too big early on – Many internet marketing failures try to do too much too fast. You are not going to create the ultimate web site for dog lovers overnight. Start small with dog training tips and add content daily. Those 1,000+ page web sites took months or years to build, so will yours.

4. Lack of knowledge – Would you be a successful plumber without knowing anything about plumbing? No. Then to be a successful internet marketer you need to learn internet marketing. Find a successful mentor willing to help you and you will be way ahead of the crowd.

5. Not investing in your business – You won’t get any support or very much web traffic on with a free web host. Many times, the best ebooks, scripts, and tools are the ones that cost money. You can run an online business for next to nothing but you’ll achieve faster and more profitable results by investing in the right tools.

6. “If I build it, they will come” – You can have the most comprehensive and informative website on natural healing in the world but if you don’t promote your site and work to drive traffic to it no one will know about it. There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You should be using several of them.

7. Lack of patience – You will not be making $10,000 a month when you start. Internet marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. It takes time and testing to build your web traffic and increase your conversion rate. In the beginning you might actually lose money and this is when too many people give up without giving their business time to grow.

8. Wrong niche – So you wrote that ebook on underwater basket weaving and you’re wondering why nobody is buying it? Find a niche but make sure it’s profitable first. Too many times people create the product first then try to figure out how to sell it. Find out what the people want then give or sell it to them.

9. No Uniqueness – There are a million low carb diet books out there, what makes yours so unique? Why should I buy your widget when Bob’s widgets are just as good and he’s been selling widgets a lot longer than you? Stand out from the crowd and get noticed. Know your competition and do what they do better or do something totally different.

10. Lack of commitment – To be successful, you must be committed to success. Behind every success story there are many hours of work and dedication. You’ll need drive and determination if you want to be the next internet success story everyone is talking about.

Print out these ten reasons for failure and post it next to your computer monitor or tape them to your bathroom mirror.

Everyday review your online business and make sure you are not making any of these mistakes. Do this and you are well on your way to being an internet marketing success.

There are many ways to reach out and find the people you are trying to attract for your business. Here are just a handful of ways to get you started:

1) Attend organization meetings

Where do people in your target market hang out? Research this, and then plan to attend a meeting or two to mix and mingle. What better way to meet and get to know these individuals while learning more about the market?

2) Offer to speak at a meeting or conference

What do you have to offer that you feel could be of value to those you are trying to reach out to? Present a short talk or slide show on a helpful topic. Be sure you present something of value to the group. What helpful tips or other material would hold ther attention, and entice them to learn more about you and what you do? Just give them a small taste of your skills and knowledge. Chances are, they will want to talk to you after the presentation.

3) Advertise in publications your target market reads

The Internet is a great place to research what publications are out there. You can probably even get your advertisement to appear online as well as in the hard copy of a publication. Advertising can be rather expensive, so be careful with this one!

4) Present a free teleclass

If you are not confident in your public speaking skills, but still feel you have something of value to teach those you are trying to influence, try offering a no-cost teleclass. It is usually fairly inexpensive to rent a bridge line to host your class. You can teach from the comfort of your own home, too. This is also a great way to get a list of names to add to your subscriber list for mailings. If you are comfortable with this option, you can charge a small fee for future teleclasses you hold, which will bring you some passive income.

5) Start a blog

Write daily or weekly posts related to subject matter that will pique the interest of your target market. Spend time researching particular topics that you can write about. Then, add some pizazz…get excited when you post the information to your blog. If you’re excited about something, others will be too. And don’t forget to use keywords. These are what the search engines will use to find the content in your blog and draw others to it.

New York is an odd town for drivers. On the one hand, it’s hard to find a single friend in NYC who owns a car, and on the other the hand… those roads sure seem jam-packed nonetheless, right? As you might assume, there’s a lot of things that set NYC car culture apart from the rest of the country’s. Here are ten facts to prove it:

1. There’s no way you’d ever guess this based on a typical day in NYC, but it’s illegal to honk your horn in traffic except for in emergencies. Obviously, this is one of those laws that they’re not too worried about enforcing on a day to day basis in the city.
2. It’s estimated that the average New Yorker spent seventy-four hours of their life stuck in traffic jams back in 2014. And you thought California’s jam-packed freeways were bad! It’s like they say: Nobody drives in New York, there’s too much traffic.
3. Some forms of automotive transport are illegal in New York City. Namely: Hoverboards. Yep, those two-wheeled scooter-thingies you see people rolling around on are banned in New York. Looks like you’re walking to the subway. Luckily, the furthest apartment from a station within the city limits is only .8 miles away, so it’s not too long of a trip.
4. UPS trucks reportedly collect about 15,000 parking tickets a month in NYC. If you think about it, that kind of makes perfect sense. You’re not going to finish your route on time if you’re always looking for a place to park, so it may be more cost-effective to pay the ticket than it is to waste your time looking for somewhere to park legally. In fact…
5. It’s estimated that the average NYC driver spends one hundred seven hours a year looking for parking spaces. This racks up a total cost of over two thousand bucks in fuel and wasted time. So maybe UPS’s strategy makes perfect sense. Anyways, it’s a good thing a defensive driving course can save you money on insurance, because driving in NY can get very expensive very fast.
6. Yo Yo Ma, you know him, right? The only cello player you can name? He once left his two hundred and sixty-six-year-old cello, valued at two and a half million bucks, in the back of a cab in New York City. Miraculously, it was returned to him in time for the night’s concert.
7. That incredible car chase in The French Connection was shot live. Those were not stunt drivers on the road, but real NYC motorists. How they pulled that off without winding up in jail, we couldn’t tell you, but the results are stunning.
8. NYC traffic is bad by design. In most cities, the roads are built for cars. In NYC, the congested traffic is a result of city planning that is orchestrated to favor pedestrians and cyclists over drivers. This is one reason why NYC drivers generally keep their cars parked unless they’re planning an out-of-town road trip. We’ll keep an ear out for CES car news and see what kind of effect this has with self-driving cars.
9. Cab licenses, or “medallions” are in limited supply, and a pair went for two and a half million at auction in 2013. Maybe this is why you’re seeing more Ubers and fewer yellow cars lately.

Driving the NYC coastline would take you longer than cruising the beaches of Miami, L.A., San Francisco and Miami combined. It’s a series of islands, so while it takes up less land mass than those cities, it’s pretty much one hundred percent coastal real estate. If you want to cruise around New York City, and we mean all the way around, you’re looking at nearly six hundred miles of road.

Buggy whip may not be a term that you have heard of unless you spend a lot of time in a buggy style vehicle.  In today’s safety conscious (and maybe slightly cynically money drive law suit) world anything piece of equipment of clothing that can increase the safety and visibility of your vehicles and equipment is always a positive.

Buggy Whips are essentially tall flags that fit to your vehicle usually on a magnetic base that are placed on the bonnet or side of the vehicle you can see some at https://wisuk.co.uk/buggy-whip.  They are created in bright colours usually oranges, yellows and greens. They are also made with LED lights to ensure that your vehicle can be seen at night as well as during the day.  The Whips have been used in industries such as mining and construction for a number of years, but they are moving into other industries such as buggy driving and could be used in agricultural and landscaping uses. These flags are essentially high visibility jackets for your vehicle.

Buggy racing has become a popular adrenalin fuelled past time and is akin to dirt bike racing or rally cars but in a buggy type vehicle. Unlike a car these vehicles don’t really have a roof or sides, apart for the obligatory roll bars and sometimes some extra netting to help prevent you getting covered in too much dirt from the track – although in my opinion that is one of the fun aspects of these experiences. Or maybe opt for a two-seater vehicle and see how much dirt you can get your passenger covered in!

As they are light weight vehicles they often slip and slide around the tracks, requiring all your skill and attention to keep them heading in the direction that you want them to. Some of the larger buggies or all-terrain vehicles have the equivalent power in their engines to a 750CC motorbike. There are various types of experience days that you can take part in including landscape and safari style trekking or if you really catch the all-terrain bug you can compete in time-trial competitions and pursuit challenges.

So, why not slip on some old comfy clothing, tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeved top is good idea and get yourself down to your local track to cover yourself in overalls, don a safety helmet and get ready to get dirty whilst you speed around the track.

Independence is something everyone should strive for: being self-reliant. Self-reliance is a vital key to living a healthy life. Contrary to the basic survival skills we all need another set of skills that will make us jack of all trades. This means that we can handle any type of situation no matter the emergency.

The Top 5 Life Skills You Need to Know

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know some of these now, you could always learn them. After all, it’s better late than never, right?Here are the 5 things everyone should know how to.

1. Build a fire without matches.

From the beginning of mankind, the fire has to be an important element for survival. Fire produces heat, warmth and light.

There is a primal link between fire and man, thus everyone should know how to build one without matches. You never know when it might come in handy. For instance, imagine you have gone camping and you lost your bag pack while escaping a bear. In this situation, the skill will become handy, but it doesn’t have to be this extreme. All in all, it is cool knowing you can make an anywhere fire without the need for a matchbox.

2. You should know how to swim

A lot of animals are born with the basic skill of swimming. Humans, on the other hand, have to learn and keep practising until they can swim with ease. Mastering how to swim at an early age is crucial because it will help one later in life.

Learning how to swim is important because:-

• One acquires the ability to survive in water. Knowing how to swim especially in deep waters can help save your life.
• Have a chance to save another person’s life. Drowning is the second-injury causing death for kids under 14 years. If you are a parent or someone who works around children learning how to swim is crucial.
• Swimming is a healthy form of exercise.

3. Learn how to perform CPR.

CPR can help save lives. Everyone should train on how to perform CPR. There has been a rise in the number of heart attacks. Moreover, people who get heart attacks outside the hospital die. This is a life skill that can save a loved one.

4. You should learn how to cook.

If you cannot prepare a decent meal, chances are you might not survive. Everyone should at least know how to cook an egg.

5. Manage time

Good time management is important for our personal lives and career success. Making use of time wisely is crucial as we are able to handle important aspects of our lives.