I communicate daily with people who reach out to me on Etsy.
There have been several instances in the past where customers told me that my messages had disappeared from their inbox. Yesterday, the same thing happened again, and I discovered that Etsy had marked my messages as spam.
On a smartphone, there is no option to select different inboxes in Etsy’s messaging system, but on a computer, the inbox has multiple categories: Inbox, From Etsy, Sent, Unread, Spam, and Trash.
Interestingly, I only became fully aware of these inbox categories after multiple conversations with different customers were marked as spam. I have been using Etsy for about five years, yet I was surprised by how narrow my perspective had been.
Messages mistakenly marked as spam by Etsy had a checkbox labeled “This message is not spam” in the spam folder. I learned that checking this box removes the spam designation.
In the past, I would be shocked when a conversation with a customer suddenly vanished from my inbox, even though we had been having a pleasant exchange. But now, I feel reassured knowing the reason behind it.
Separately, yesterday, while checking my Instagram messages, I noticed a number displayed next to the “General” inbox, which is located two tabs away from my usual “Primary” inbox. When I tapped on the General inbox, I found several messages from different people. Since several days had already passed, I quickly responded to them.
Failing to notice these Instagram messages was entirely my fault. On the same day, I experienced issues with messages on both Etsy and Instagram.
Customer messages are extremely valuable to me. Moving forward, I will make sure to check them more carefully.
Another issue I have encountered is that my website frequently gets stuck on a loading screen. The loading screen is simple, displaying “Pearl Bless you Flower Jem” in black text on a white background.
When I refresh the page, it sometimes loads properly. About a month ago, I seriously worked on resolving this issue and thought it had been mostly fixed.
The root cause was a massive amount of spam emails—hundreds per day—from someone (a company, perhaps?) repeatedly asking for wholesale prices in every possible language except Japanese. To counter this, I continuously restricted access from the IP addresses sending these spam messages. However, during this process, my website started experiencing issues.
A few days ago, a very kind regular customer who often purchases Flower Jem pearls informed me about the website issue. This made me realize I needed to solve the problem properly, so I had an expert diagnose it.
However, even the expert couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause.
After some thought, I decided to remove the loading screen altogether. As soon as I did, the issue seemed to be resolved.
Originally, my website didn’t have a loading screen. One day, I thought, “It would look stylish if ‘Pearl Bless you’ appeared while the page loaded,” so I created and implemented it. But it turned out that this was the real cause of the problem. It wasn’t “Bless you” at all!
I never ask friends or acquaintances to check my website. There are personal blog posts on it, and I prefer not to share them with people I know. Besides, 99% of my friends and acquaintances have no interest in pearls. Since my website is in English, it’s also inconvenient for most Japanese readers. For these reasons, I never ask them to visit my site.
However, given the recent issues, I now feel the need to have someone regularly check it.
It’s currently 11:52 PM. I completely immersed myself in pearl work over the weekend again, and like every week, I end up feeling exhausted on Mondays.
Tonight, after coming home, I made a bento box, had dinner, took a bath, and then, around 8 PM, I fell asleep while sitting in my chair. I woke up around 10 PM, and now, here I am.
Last week felt like spring with its warm weather, but tonight, it feels like winter again. It seems to be raining as well. I don’t particularly like rainy days, but I always remind myself that rain is essential for Akoya oysters to grow healthy.
Thank you for reading. Come visit again!
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