Oh No, Pinterest blacklisted my website as SPAM! What do I do?

Things were really starting to roll along, I was pushing products out one after another, I had some success with Pinterest marketing which was starting to really drive traffic to the website and I even had my first sale! And then... I noticed I went from consistently having traffic referrals from Pinterest to literally none at all. After a few days of being bummed and confused, I figured it out...Pinterest blacklisted my website as spam! Ahhh, talk about devastation. 

Every time a user tried to repin one of my products from my Pinterest board or tried to visit my website, the error box of it being blocked as spam would pop up and prevent anyone from visiting my website. What the hell, right? For a new business that just spent money on Pinterest advertising and whose main traffic will more than likely always be generated from Pinterest, ouch this hurt! 

On December 23rd I submitted a support ticket to Pinterest Help and did hear back from the Customer Service on December 24th. They said, "This was a mistake on our side. I reviewed and removed your website from our blacklist. Occasionally good websites get caught in the mix when we're looking for spammy sites. This shouldn't happen again, however, please let us know if it does." I thought, oh good, that was a quick fix and we can move on! So I went to the website and tried to Pin something...still not working. Went to my Pinterest board and tried to click on a product...still spam. WTH again! I went from ecstatic to pissed again. 

I wrote back immediately and still heard nothing on December 28th. I emailed again and nothing. I decided to open up a new ticket since it worked pretty fast the first time to say that the issue had never been resolved. I heard back from Customer Service within a pretty quick period of time from the same gentleman that helped me the first time. He apologized and said it should be working this time. Perfect, I tried out the website and pinned a few items. It appeared to be working, so happy days again right? Wrong. After I pinned about 3 products, the damn website was blocked again... ahh! I quickly responded back to Lloyd who had helped me, but also put in another ticket. Thankfully Mr. Lloyd responded quickly and stated that this time whatever was causing the repeated blocking issue has been fixed. So far so good. 

Since I've worked on a website development team in the past, I get it. Sometimes there's extra layers of things that you overlook, so no hard feelings there. But... for my new business, I'm sad. I spent a good amount of time and money on Pinterest advertising right before this happened, so although the original campaign wasn't running, I lost all of those residual Likes, Repins and traffic that it would've generated. It's heartbreaking that when I just started to get things rolling, the main engine that was driving "broke down". 

There's nothing I can do but move forward. If you ever run into a similar situation jump on that support ticket right away. I figured the reason I didn't hear back for those 4 days was either because of Christmas or because Lloyd closed the ticket and he didn't get my email. I don't know, but if I had to do it over, I'd start a new ticket. This may have been the difference in 4 days!

What caused this to happen? I have no idea, but I'm guessing the word "bare" in the domain name had something to do with it! No nudes here people, just straight up printable art goodness! :)