New "evidence" has emerged this weekend which suggests that Princess Diana's driver, Henri Paul, was not drunk at the time of her fatal accident. Well, at least that's what the Daily Express says anyway. Apparently, he was "set up" by the French authorities in a botched bid to end her affair with Dodi Fayed. The Express is reporting the contents of yet another book on the Diana "death mystery" which it claims presents a "tidal wave" of evidence showing that the autopsy was rigged.

Well, you can decide for yourself whether or not you believe this story. Regular readers of the Daily Express will know that Mondays are the days when it carries it's latest missive on the Diana car crash. For some unknown reason, the editors at the Daily Express are not convinced that it was an accident. You will doubtless have heard the conspiracy theories, you may have even read one of the many books that suggest Diana was killed by the secret services, or indeed that the Royal Family itself "arranged" her death. Indeed, I have been personally told about the agent who closed the tunnel in Paris so that the "crash" could be arranged without witnesses. But, it's bunkum.

Sometimes, human beings don't like accepting the simple explanations. We are designed to look for the complex, for "secrets" to things; it is part of our natural curiosity which helps the species survive. Hence, when something as simple as an accident occurs to such a well-known individual, we tend not to believe it. We find it difficult to believe - especially with the "no smoke without fire" clause we keep in the back of our minds.

The sad fact is, Diana died in tragic accident caused by a drunk driver.

The problem is, the Diana story reflects so much of what goes on with the internet. Everywhere you look there are conspiracy theories about how Google is planning to take over the world. Or there are "secrets" on how to circumvent search engine rankings so you can get to the top of the pile. If that's not enough for you, there are plenty of ebooks you can download which purport to show you how you can make a million dollars within a month, if only you were to follow the "secret rules" of website success.

Like the conspiracy theories of Diana's death, these "theories" about online success are mere bunkum. Even though we want to believe that there is more to it, online success comes down to two things: taking action and hard work. Simple.

Instead of sitting there thinking "I must write a blog one day", the successful bloggers just get on and do it. And they do it again and again and again. The unsuccessful bloggers are those looking for some kind of "conspiracy theory" on blogging, whiling away hours on end searching the web for the "secret" to blogging.

Similarly, those who are concerned about the benefits of social networking are busy trawling the web for the "secrets" to doing social networking "quickly and easily", or in "ten minutes a week". They believe the conspiracy theory that it's easy to do, if you do it the "secret" way and you can then spend the rest of your day on the beach. Tosh. Effective social networking takes time and effort. Get over it.

Whatever aspect of the online world you consider, the companies that have mastered success have done just two things. They have done something and they keep working at it. That's all.

So, rather than looking for the secret to online success, just do something - whether it's writing a blog post or spending some time on LinkedIn - and then do some more and some more and some more.

Otherwise you are going to end up like the Daily Express, forever looking for some "secret" simply because you cannot accept the truth. And do you really want to end up like the Daily Express?

Have you forgotten anything this week, such as Mother's Day? if so, the chances are you are a middle-aged male...! Men around their 50s (oh dear...!) are the ones who are the most forgetful, according to new research. So, if you are a woman - brilliant - you can smugly accept you are better than us blokes. And if you are a middle-aged chap, well perhaps this week it is time to get that little notebook in every room, just so you can jot down reminders as you think of them. Oh, and that won't do you any harm either. Studies repeatedly show the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who write everything down, from ideas to what they have learnt. And to do that, they have notebooks everywhere, from the car to the shower. Or is it because those successful business people are, well, middle-aged men, who have admitted their memory is not up to much? Either way, you can't do yourself any harm by having notebooks to jot things down in - even if you are a woman with a brilliant memory...!

So, what else could you be doing this week, on top of investing in a pile of notepads? Here are my suggestions.

• Planning: Video is increasingly popular online. Indeed, over a billion videos are watched each day online. There is little doubt that video is an important communications tool which your website visitors will increasingly demand. So, what plans to you have in place to increase your content using video? What technologies are you going to use to incorporate video into your website?  This is no longer an area which you can "think about", there needs to be some serious planning as to how you can begin your own online TV channel for your business. Remember, if you don't do this, your competitors will.
• Content: Monday, is the "Ides of March", the day on which a soothsayer is alleged to have told Julius Caesar to "beware" and the day on which he was killed. Ever since, the 15th of March has been deemed the day that bad things are most likely to happen. So, what evils have best your industry on this date? Is there some link between the "ides" and your customers? If so, it could make a great article. More happily, perhaps, the 15th March is the date on which the first ever internet domain name was registered, 25 years ago in 1985. That's worthy of comment, surely. This week also sees the 45th anniversary of the first ever space walk, quite topical now that President Obama has cancelled much of NASA's work. If you want to celebrate a birthday or two this week, how about American actor, Rob Lowe, who will be 46 this week? You could write an article on communications, since he played the Whitehouse communications guru in The West Wing. And if actors aren't your thing, well you might like to celebrate England footballer Theo Walcott's 21st Birthday this week.
• Tidying up: How much old paperwork is cluttering your office? Are your filing draws stuffed to the brim? Time perhaps to get as much as you can scanned in. Several desktop scanning devices are now available, such as the ScanSnap, to do the job. And you don't even have to store all those old documents on your PC; you can subscribe to something like LiveDrive to have them stored on a remote server, always available no matter where you are in the world.
• New features: Your web business isn't all about the internet; sometimes you exist in the physical world...! And just occasionally you need to do a physical world thing, such as write a letter, print it and post it, but you can't because you are away from your office. Well, thanks to ViaPost you can do exactly that. This provides you with the ability to write a letter - or any document - on your laptop, for instance, and then click "print". But instead of the item printing out in your hotel room, it is sent to the ViaPost servers where the letter is printed and posted to your recipient. In fact, you don't even have to use this service "on the road". You can use it as your normal system for printing correspondence. That way you save the time of printing it, stuffing the envelopes and then trekking down to the Post Office yourself.
• Reading: I'm only half-way through this book, but what I've read so far means I have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending it. "E-Riches 2.0" shows you exactly how to set up and run an online business and make serious money from your efforts. It is clear, thorough and provides several useful examples and case histories. It is down-to-earth and is no-nonsense in its approach, so it explains clearly that you have to take action, rather than just read the book..! But if you take the action suggested, then there is every reason to believe you will do well. If you are looking for a complete "how to" guide on making money from an online business, this is the book to buy.

So, there you have it for another week. See you in seven days...!

Shock horror..! Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest individual. Instead, the Mexican telecomms supremo, Carlos Slim, has overtaken Bill to become the richest person on the planet, at least according to Forbes Magazine. He is half a billion dollars richer than Bill and is the first non-American to top the Billionaires List in 18 years. They will be crying into their beers in Wall Street.

Every year when this list is published, people are eager to find out who has the most money. The media clamours for interviews with these stars of making money and Forbes Magazine, naturally enough, is delighted with the ensuing publicity. The richest Briton, the Duke of Westminster, has hardly had a look in this morning; after all he's merely the 45th richest in the world with a paltry $12bn. And pity poor James Dyson, he's 937th in the world with a mere $1bn. Gosh, he's so far behind that Slim chap with his $53.5bn; but at least he's in good company with J K Rowling, also with $1bn.

Do any of these people care? Perhaps when you have $1bn, what's another 50? You hardly notice the difference. After all, at today's interest rates if you put just $1bn in a standard savings account you'd be earning around $130,000 interest each day. Could you live on that?

This league table is - like almost all league tables - nonsense. If Forbes wanted, they could continue working out the list down and down and down, until they find the poorest person in, say, Somalia putting them in 6,807,782,628th place. And the same is true for everything you have ever thought about in terms of your online business. We could construct a list of income via websites - oh, they do that...! And yes, you can find that Google, Amazon, Ebay and so on, all dominate the list.

If you wanted you could construct a leage table of website traffic...oh, they do that as well do they? And you could look admiringly at the billions of hits that Google gets and become downhearted at your paltry hundreds of visitors.

Or, you could have a league table of Twitter followers, or LinkedIn connections...don't tell me, they do that as well...? So, you've got fewer followers than Stephen Fry? Oh my goodness.

Guess what? None of it matters.

Let's imagine you want to do business with a particular individual at, say, Microsoft. If they follow you on Twitter, or connect with you on LinkedIn and visit your web page, that's fantastic. The very person you want is engaging with you. Sure, your one hit on your website and your single follower at Twitter would put you at the very bottom of the league tables, but would you care? Nope - because you'd be engaging the very person you want.

And there's another factor - you'd be happy. You would have achieved what you wanted.

If all you do is focus on things like how much higher in the league tables your competitors and heroes are, you'll have much less mental energy to devote to connecting with the people that matter. And you will be less happy. There are people down at the level of six billionth in the Forbes list who are happy with their lot in life. Focusing on that, and not on phoney lists, is much more important. If your web business is bringing in the income you are happy with and you are doing business with the people you like then forget all those league tables of web traffic, Twitter followers or the income you generate. None of that matters a jot compared with a happy you and your happy customers.