In 2006, while still in high school, I designed and built a website to provide fans of "French Idol" a way to download videos of the breakthrough performer of the season, Christophe.
Thanks to a straightforward SEO strategy, the site quickly grabbed the first position for the search term "christophe french idol" and attracted thousands of monthly visitors.
I put ads on it and was making a few hundred dollars every week. As a 16 year old kid I was stoked!
For the next season, I prepared a more advanced website, with user comments, ratings and videos for all candidates. Unfortunately, the network sent me a cease and disist letter right after launch. They had finally decided to offer their own video on demand service :).
