The fact that you are reading this post, you probably got the “Pinterest account suspension” penalty?
It happens to the best of us, like you and myself, so take a deep breath first…. the truth is, many of us got out of it too and life goes on.
And if you are reading this just to AVOID Pinterest account suspension from happening to you – well done! By reading what I am about to share with you, I hope you learn a thing or two and continue to stay out of the Pinterest Jail.
In this post, I will cover the following topics:
- How I got my pinterest account suspension penalty?
- 2 types of Pinterest penalties and what does it mean when your Pinterest account is suspended?
- How to appeal a suspension on Pinterest? – A step-by-step guide
- How to avoid Pinterest account suspension in the future?
- The biggest lesson I learned from this experience.
Disclosure: Some of the links in the article contains affiliate links, which means that if you make a purchase through one of the links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the blog and allows me to continue to make free content. I will only recommend products that I use and love. Thank you for your support!
How I Got My Pinterest Account Suspension?
It was only the FIRST week that I started using Pinterest for business back in 2019. I picked up one of those FREE “Making-Money-From-Pinterest” videos from YouTube and started to try out some strategies using the auto scheduler – Tailwind.
The video was only about 30min. long, but I naively thought that I can learn all the tips and tricks to make money on Pinterest from this short 30min. video – RED FLAG…. but I was just excited to try the tools like Tailwind and Canva, and didn’t want to waste anymore time to learn.
One evening, after a couple of days in, I opened my Tailwind and got a message that it couldn’t connect with my Pinterest account. When I went on the Pinterest website, sure enough, I couldn’t log in. I checked my email, and there it was – A message from Pinterest staring at my face: Your Pinterest account has been suspended.
I panicked a little – not gonna lie… As a new blogger, I had high hopes to use Pinterest to bring traffic to my new site. Now my account is suspended FOREVER, I felt like someone had kicked me in my stomach.
I couldn’t fall asleep that night, and kept thinking what have I done wrong?
The next morning, I started doing some research on why my Pinterest account was suspended and came to find out that apparently this happens quite often. Pinterest has a set of algorithms, and certain user behaviors can trigger the algorithm to suspend your account.
2 Types of Pinterest Penalties:
There are 2 types of penalties from Pinterest. One does more damage than the other.
1. Pinterest account suspension:
- This is the most common penalty. It can only take one person to report you. Or more commonly your pinning behaviour triggers the spam filter.
- In this case, you are NOT able to log in to your Pinterest account, however the Pins are still active and possibly still getting traffic for your site.
2. Pinterest blocked my site:
- This is a much more serious penalty, and harder to get your account back as a result. It also does more damage to your site. However, it is still possible to get your account back, especially if it was a mistake by Pinterest.
- In this case, you can still log in to your Pinterest account, however, the links from your pins to your website are blocked. The pinners will get a message when they click your pins that the site was blocked by Pinterest on spam.
For the record, what I got was the “Pinterest account suspension” penalty, but the steps to appeal for both penalties are very similar except Step 2, which I will cover below.
How to Get Your Suspended Pinterest Account Reactivated?
– A Step-by-Step Guide
Disclosure: Below steps are what many, including myself did to get my Pinterest account back, but the decision is still up to Pinterest on whether to restate your account or not.
So let’s not leave you hanging for any longer, here is the step-by-step guide to appeal to get your account reactivated.
Step #1: Take a deep breath and tell yourself this can be a mistake – either on your part, or on Pinterest’s part.
Step #2: Go to the Pinterest Contact Page Under Appeals, depending on your penalty, click either “Appeal on account suspension”, or “Pinterest blocked my site”.
For “Appeal on account suspension”, after selecting the appeal type, click “Continue” and fill out the details on the next page.
For “Pinterest blocked my site” penalty, after selecting the appeal type, also select the appropriate type under “What is the issue”. If your case is that ALL pins were blocked for spam, choose below as the closest to your case.
Step #3: On the next page, describe the issue. This is an important one – so please pay attention.
Firstly, it is important to understand that something has triggered the Pinterest Algorithm to suspend your account, but a REAL person i.e. the person who is going to read your “description” has the power to reactivate your account, or keep you in jail FOREVER.
So rather than un-leashing your frustration and anger, write a sincere email to ask for your Pinterest account to be reactivated. Here are a few helpful points that you can mention, if they apply to your case:
- If you think that you have made the mistake, genuinely apologize and promise you will be very careful in the future. Upon reflecting, I think this was my case. I didn’t know what I was doing, and repeated the same pins too many times. But hey, mistakes happen, especially when we are learning, right?
- It’s also worth mentioning that you are a legit blogger or content creator, who uses an approved scheduler like Tailwind.
- Finally, leave on a positive note – explain to them how much you trust this platform to grow your business
Step #4: Send an additional email to creators-support@pinterest.com. This goes to a separate team from Pinterest that specializes in helping bloggers and content creators to resolve issues much quicker. You can copy the same description to this email.
Step #5: WAIT (this is the hardest part)
After submitting the ticket, I got an instant auto reply confirmation, stating it may take from a few hours to a few days to get back to me.
Be sure to check in your Junk mail, in case it didn’t make to your Inbox.
If you didn’t hear back from them within 2 business days (they don’t work on weekends), I would repeat Step 2 & 3. Some people did this for 2 weeks before finally hearing back from them.
Step #6: For those of you who got an automated email regarding the decision is final, but NOT signed by a specific representative, reply to the email again.
Regardless how “final” the wording might be, reply back anyway. Many people ended up getting their account back after receiving the email. So keep trying my friend!
As for my case, luckily I heard back from them within 1 business day and here’s the reply.
So in the end… I got out of the PINTEREST JAIL!!!!!!!!!
For the Blocked site penalty, you can read more HERE .
How to Avoid Pinterest Account Suspension in the Future:
- Read the Pinterest Communicty Guideline page. Especially the “Spam and Quality” section.
- Avoid pinning too many pins within a short period of time. Stick with 20-30 pins TOTAL per day on all boards.
- Avoid pinning the same pin multiple times in a short period of time, especially on the same board (yep, that was me…)
- Avoid using a personal account. Instead, convert your personal account to a business account. It only takes a few minutes. Follow the Pinterest Guideline HERE.
- Avoid pinning spammy or misleading content. It only takes someone to report your account or pin as spam to put you in jail.
- Avoid using unauthorized images. Don’t just download images from Google. Use either free stock photos or purchased stock photos.
- Avoid using unauthorized auto schedulers. Tailwind is the No.1 approved scheduler by Pinterest.
The Biggest Lesson I Learned from My Pinterest Account Suspension Experience:
We all make mistakes, but if we can learn from it then we can turn the bad experience to a positive lesson.
So what is the biggest lesson I have learned from this experience? …
Do not take shortcuts and pinch pennies on learning. Nothing is FREE. I was trying to save money to learn something that is complicated from a free YouTube video, and I ended up paying a price in return.
After the experience, I invested on Elise McDowell’s eCourse “Paid by Pinterest” . I took the time and learned the ins and outs PROPERLY. Lo and behold, there was a section in her course to teach you “How Prevent Your Pinterest Account Getting Suspended”.
“Paid by Pinterest” really helped me to re-start my Pinterest journey the RIGHT WAY. I have since made money from Pinterest, and tripled traffic to my website. Here’s my in depth review on the eCourse.
I hope you can benefit from this book too. To make your learning experience even easier, I have developed a cheat sheet on “5 Burning Questions Answered on Pinterest + 7 Essential Terminology” to combat these newbie symptoms when I first started out with Pinterest.
You can get yours FREE here:
Hope you get out of Pinterest jail soon and happy learning.
Chloe x
Hello, I really want to first appreciate your effort in putting this great website together and writing this article. i honestly do not think that their customer support at pinterest is very effective because i can remember my account was block some time ago and i wrote to them. it took so much time to get it fixed
Sounds like you had Pinterest account suspension experience like many of us. Sorry to hear that it took some time for the issue to get resolved, but glad to hear it did get resolved at the end…
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Chloe
Hi, there’s some very good lessons to be learned here. I am regularly uploading pictures from wealthy affiliate to Pinterest. And I will say that it takes a significant amount of time and dedication to I try to stay away from the Tricks and gimmicks. I have learned that there is an abundance of liars and scammers out there, and it is very difficult to find honest people today. there are so many people that are willing to scam you And it’s unbelievable.
It is very difficult to weed through the quality content that is actually honest and helpful. The free video i initially learned from wasn’t BAD or a scam per se, but it certainly skipped a lot of key details… Invest on your learning and take the time is the biggest lesson here for me.
Thanks for stopping by Jake and all the best!
Chloe