Frank Antunez had an idea from an early age of what he wanted his future to look like.
After he finished his business degree, he helped grow the family business to 6 figures, and it was then that he realized he had a way with words.
He had a few successful businesses and side hustles, but ultimately he decided to build out a blog. That’s when he created FrankNez.
Over time, he’s been able to challenge mainstream media, build trust with his vast community, and stand up “for the people.” He believes that his site is more than just a high-income generating online business, earning up to $80k/month and with traffic in the millions; it’s the future of media.
Keep reading to find out:
- Why he decided to get into blogging
- When and why his blog really peaked
- Where his brand has been featured
- Where his income comes from
- How much he works on his business
- His main marketing strategies
- His thoughts on SEO
- His approach to keyword research and link building
- How he grows his email list
- The resources and tools he uses
- His main challenges
- His greatest accomplishment
- His biggest mistake
- His advice for other entrepreneurs
Meet Frank Antunez
My name is Frank but the world knows me as Frank Nez.
Where do I start?
I grew up in Santa Ana, California to two very young parents. Being the oldest of four, I experienced a lot of my parents’ struggles and challenges.
This played a very important role in my life because I would too become a very young parent at the age of 17 myself. That was the start of my current life; kids really do change you.
When my son was born, I knew that I didn’t want my child to go through what I did, having such a young father and mother, especially seeing them deal with financial and economic challenges, though they did their best.
So, I was motivated to go to college, get a business degree, and see how I could use my skills in the family business my father had later built during my teenage years.
I was always ambitious, but more so in my early 20s.
I got into sales and grew a six-figure clientele for my father’s apparel decorating business during a five-year run with 95% of all sales and negotiations being done via email, as it was my preferred way of communication.
I remember my father would have me write his most important emails to his higher-end clients; this is where I began to realize that I had a relationship with words.
However, this did not surprise me. I used to write poetry from 7th grade throughout high school and even college. I’ve always loved writing, music, literature, and just art in general.
My relationship with my father was complicated most of my life, especially during the time I was building my sales career alongside his company, which led me to create opportunities for myself and my family.
Around the age of 23, I began to study people like Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuck, Andy Frisella, and a whole bunch of other incredible entrepreneurs to learn as much as possible during my search to create something amazing.
I ventured off into creating small projects to generate money outside of the family business and I did this with great urgency.
See, I love to apply new knowledge as soon as I obtain it.
I began earning a few hundred dollars dropshipping apparel on eBay; then I created my first real online business doing independent artist music reviews.
This was super exciting because I started a website from scratch, offered a service to a community, and received my first online payouts for the very first time. It was real!
But there was only one problem: the work still required me to use a lot of my time. This is when I realized that I needed to build something with a lot of leverage if I was to create the world I was envisioning.
I studied leverage income from many successful brands and decided that starting a blog would be the best platform/business model for me to take on.
I named that blog FrankNez.com.
Why He Created His Site
FrankNez has evolved tremendously since its inception in 2020, and it’s done it again recently, leading to another breakthrough (thank you, God).
FrankNez.com originally started out as a personal finance and business blog. I became obsessed with sharing my skills and knowledge in money management, sales, email outreach, and so on.
In the beginning, I was blogging all about the things I was actively working on in my career and personal finance life.
Once I began investing in the stock market for the very first time in 2019, I showed people how they too could start to invest in a very easy, non-intimidating way.
Then, in 2021, the site evolved into something I never thought it would become.
FrankNez.com played a massive role during the “meme stock” frenzy of 2021, when AMC stock became all the rage.
During this time, I took on the role as a journalist after seeing legacy media attack investors as they recommended the market to sell the stock.
See, upon my research I found it made absolutely no sense for people to sell the stock. There was a huge opportunity to squeeze short sellers.
So, I began publishing market analysis on AMC Entertainment stock and countering the outrageous narrative legacy media was painting in support of the hedge funds shorting these stocks.
These publications attracted a big readership because Reddit and FrankNez were the only writing-format platforms discussing this data.
Long story short, the stock traded its lowest around $5 per share during my first publications and soared to $72 per share four months later; millions of visitors read my publications during that time.
My readers made a lot of money to say the least.
I fell in love with the community and took my role as a journalist very seriously. I began publishing “Market News” and also began to raise awareness about market injustices within the industry.
At that time, some of my close readers also made money on Shiba Inu’s all-time high as well as Bitcoin’s all-time high at the time.
My brand landed me an interview in a Wall Street documentary, a feature on popular news site TheStreet, and several of my articles to be cited in official SEC and Congressional reports.
Along the journey, I found myself helping a variety of communities by raising awareness about the issues they faced every day.
This eventually led me from one topic to another and finally to where the site is today.
FrankNez.com is now one of the fastest-growing independent news sites in the world, amassing nearly 22 million viewers in the past three years alone, with more than half of that viewership coming in from just last year.
How Much He’s Earning
Like any profitable online business or venture, revenue fluctuates every quarter.
During the last quarter of 2023, FrankNez.com earned between $60k and $80k per month in combined ad and sponsored content revenue.
It took just under four years to get to this point.
During my first year, the blog only made about $100 the entire year.
The first quarter in pretty much every industry tends to drop, but traffic and revenue has begun to rise again going into the second quarter of 2024.
For example, March was $33k in ad revenue + $5k in sponsored content, and April so far has been $34k + $8.6k in sponsored content.
The site is generating between 1 million and 3 million views per month today with an expected outlook of up to 5 million views per month later this year based on higher output than the previous year.
The most traffic the site has had in one single day was 319,487 views. The site made $13.6k in ad revenue that Saturday.
As for my team, up until recently, it’s just been me. My brother is currently helping run a part of our sponsored content department.
I have a few requirements and processes I’d like to test out first before hiring full-time writers. There’s definitely a huge gap for growth.
How much I work on my business today depends on a variety of factors, including my personal life.
When I first started my website, I would get home around 6 pm from work, start working on my site around 7 pm (after dinner), and go to bed around 12 am-1 am, and then be ready for work again by 6:30 am for an entire year.
Until recently, I was working 10-16 hours per day. Now it’s more like 8-12 hours per day depending on my personal schedule.
At this point I don’t look at the time, it’s just become a lifestyle—and I love it.
If I hit my daily target goals early, great, and if I don’t, it’s all good. The laptop closes when everything for the day has been taken care of.
Frank’s Main Marketing Strategy
At first, I was using social media a lot to promote my brand and content.
For those of you who are starting an online business and want to market yourself, you need to identify where your audience is.
Find out where they hang out and interact with them.
You must also provide tons of value. You must be selfless and truly care. Success is only a byproduct of the value you bring to the table.
This can take time to figure out, but start there. You must share your content everywhere first to identify where the most engagement is coming from.
In my book, Unlock Your Personal Brand, I dive a little deeper on how to promote yourself and how to establish yourself as an authority in your space.
If you’re struggling to stand out or don’t know where to start, it’s worth looking at.
My site has grown to a point now where it’s being referred to bigger audiences by big sites and is now self-sustaining in many of these marketing areas.
That’s the importance of a brand. A brand works for you when you’re not working on it.
Focus on building a brand, which means building trust and an image. Focus on great quality content. If you do this successfully, others will promote you organically.
His Thoughts on SEO
SEO for my brand has been extremely important. I think everybody’s strategy is different, right? You need to backtest a lot until you see results somewhere.
Once you see the results, go back to identify why something worked.
Break it down and try it again to lock down this “system.”
If you haven’t figured out your SEO strategy, keep backtesting until you see a spike in engagement or traffic, and then replicate it over and over again.
Building a site or business is all about systems. You need to optimize your systems from time to time and keep improving it.
I’ve read about brands that don’t necessarily rely on SEO, and instead focus on the content itself.
I look to maximize both for the best probabilities of getting seen.
In terms of strategy, optimize tags and categories on every page and stay niche for a while so that Google begins to view your site as authoritative.
It’s important to stay niche for some time so that Google recognizes what your site is about.
This will improve your SEO as you grow and expand later.
Keyword Research
I used to use Ahrefs to see which keywords I could rank for, but if you want to grow organically, just use longtail keywords that flow naturally.
It may work for you, it may not. But just like SEO, you want to create a system that’s tailored specifically for your brand.
What works for me may not particularly work for you, so test a lot.
I don’t do much keyword research at the current stage of my website.
However, I do recommend looking at Google Trends and seeing whether there is consistent demand for your niche and/or choice of topic(s).
You want to make sure that there are people who want what you are providing. You can also use keyword research tools to identify the search volume of certain topics to get an idea of the demand.
In terms of organic traffic, get involved with a community and build rapport. They are leverage.
Link Building
I’ve never focused on link building. This happened organically as more readers shared my content throughout the years.
This is why it’s very important to network within a community and provide loads of value. If your work is exceptional, it will get shared, talked about, and expand its reach. Focus on quality, and the rest will follow.
His Content Creation Process
There are nearly 3,000 live articles on FrankNez.com at the time of this interview.
My content creation process has evolved over the years as the website has grown.
As mentioned earlier, you want to create successful systems that yield results, so it’s been all about “How can I do this better?”
This is going to vary from brand to brand and business to business.
Everything on FrankNez.com in the beginning was a “personal blog.” I was creating content from scratch and addressing my readers directly.
I think that this is what made my site stand out in the beginning; I was engaging with my readers.
Then the process evolved into researching topics and reporting on them while adding additional resources, context, and opinions.
Today, it’s a mix of all those things while curating content with hyper-focus and urgency.
I also take my images strongly into consideration and use my brand logo on all of them to boost my brand presence.
Again, it may not be necessary for you, but it’s just my style.
His Email List
I grew my email list to more than 10,000 subscribers organically by simply creating great content people wanted to read.
The more content you publish and the more readers/viewers you can get to your site, the higher the probability of more people seeing your popup newsletter.
This happened very organically over the years.
The number of signups fluctuates throughout your career as well; just something to keep in mind so you don’t panic when the landscape shifts.
His Favorite Resources
This is an interesting question because I had to piece out a little bit of everything from everyone to build what I’ve built.
Most companies doing what I’m doing are just that—big companies with big teams and decades upon decades of publishing experience.
What I worked on a lot was on mindset and combined all my skills and passions to create what I’ve created.
No one can teach you how to put your heart into your work, how to care for a massive group of people, how to stand up to the bully, or how to overcome rejection.
My recommendation to you is to learn from everybody, whether you like them or not.
Just take the best things you admire from them and apply them.
Something I’ve observed over the years is that all successful entrepreneurs have grit, discipline, and ambition.
Everyone’s journey is different, so when you get stuck, research things meant to help you out.
The books that had the most impact on me were The Mountain is You, Atomic Habits, and The Secret.
But I was also reading Seth Godin books when I wanted marketing advice, so it all depends on what you need now.
Today, the content I consume either inspires me or shows me what more is out there.
Find out who the big entrepreneurs and influencers are in your space and consume that.
Remember, what we consume we become. Therefore, also be very mindful of what you are consuming that is not feeding your goals.
Some of my favorite channels now are Lewis Howes (The School of Greatness), The School of Hard Knocks, SnewJ Knows, Alux, and Bedros Keuilien.
Also, sign up to Andy Frisella’s newsletter until his emails no longer apply to you.
I use Push Engage so that readers may opt-in for push notifications when a publication goes live. I also use OptinMonster to collect emails and MailChimp for email blasts.
His Main Challenges
The biggest challenges I’ve faced growing my business have primarily been internal challenges.
As entrepreneurs, sometimes there’s a lot of blockages inside of us. It’s when you release certain fears or self-sabotaging beliefs that things really begin to change externally.
You must become an expert and really sharpen your skillsets to the point where your confidence is top level.
Once your confidence is at top level and you have a system that has a very high probability of working out for you, nothing can hold you back.
Massive action, a proven system, and confidence is all you need to succeed and overcome any setback or challenge. Everything else holding you back is internal.
This is a long process of reshaping yourself to fit the mold for your business.
See, every challenge and obstacle in business has a solution. You must remain persistent in your efforts to identify what will yield the results you’re in search of.
His Greatest Accomplishment
When I think about my most important accomplishments professionally as an entrepreneur, I think about the communities I’ve helped.
I think about the people I’ve helped along the journey.
When I think about my most important accomplishments personally as an entrepreneur, I think about what I’ve been able to create for my family and who I’ve been able to become along the way.
What He Wishes He Knew When He Started
Honestly, I don’t wish I had known anything back when I first started that I know now.
Not knowing anything forced me to pivot and make hard decisions when things got challenging. It was the hardships and the trial and error that have made this journey ever so sweet.
I think just knowing that the landscape changes from time to time would have saved me some stress, but stress triggers change so it’s difficult to say.
I suppose I’m just a big believer of “figuring it the heck out.”
His Biggest Mistake
I haven’t really made any drastic mistakes during my entrepreneurial journey.
I mean you have occasional grammar and spelling errors when you’re starting out. Sometimes I thought a headline was way too bold.
Honestly, I think the biggest mistake I’ve made during my entrepreneurial journey was caring too much about what people thought or had to say, especially in the beginning.
It held me back, but the past is the past and that is no longer an issue.
You can’t please everyone even if you feel like it’s your duty to.
My biggest mistake was not going harder when I should have.
His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
You must want this more than anything.
You must be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to make this work; only you know what those are.
You will come across a “dip;” this is where people either make it or break it.
If you decide to break through that glass ceiling, no matter how bruised or cut up you already are, believe me when I say you will have a breakthrough.
Be quick when making decisions.
Fail as fast as you can so you can move on to what works, and don’t linger on what doesn’t.
Not everyone will believe in you. Yes it sucks, but it’s part of the process, just take it even though it hurts.
Know what your long-term goals are from the get-go.
Envision the life you want to live.
Never become complacent, even when things are looking up.
There’s no lazy way around success; discipline must become your guide, your mentor, and your best friend.
Focus on providing value first; everything else is just a byproduct of what you bring to the table.
Remain positive, grateful, and have faith in the Universe; you attract what you think about the most.
Do good by those you are serving, and never compromise your integrity for fame or money.
Business has its seasons: keep your work ethic at 100 no matter what is happening; focus on what’s in your control, not what’s out of your control.
As I like to say, knowledge isn’t power, applied knowledge is.
