I’ve gotten a bunch of spam messages all within my first week. Is this common? People I’ve never talked to before wanting to run a business empire right away! Sounds interesting… not.
Also, why does our response rate depend on responding to obvious scammers? Seems weird.
Unfortunately, spammers/scammers sometimes try to dupe/scam new sellers as they are seen as easy targets. So, it is definitely not out of the ordinary.
Yes, this is very weird. That’s the reason why I always respond to all messages (even spam). In case of a spam message, I just reply with a “no” or “blocked/reported.” 
Thanks for the advice! Glad to know it will go away if I can sell a few gigs haha!
Oh, I am not so sure if such spam/scam messages will entirely go away (TRS receive spam messages, too). But, yeah… I think they will get a lot lesser. 
Thank you for the reassurance, hanshuber16!
I get a couple spam messages a week. Usually it’s a hi or a hello, then when i reply back to them i get another hi or hello. Keep in mind you only need to answer to the first message they send in order to keep your response rate intact.
Shoot. One just seemed like they wanted to purchase my gig and they asked for my email which I shouldn’t have provided. It’s always the same you create an account, I give you $100 scam message. So annoying- is there a way to only receive messages when someone purchases a gig? Thanks for the tip on the response rate! Good to know I can tell them to piss off and block from now on!
Do you need to reply too if you report someone? If you don’t reply will it affect response rate?
I am not so sure… Probably not. But, just to be on the safe side, I always reply first before blocking/reporting them. 
I always receive spam messages but they were already blocked by the system. So I never interrupt the system.
That’s good when that happens. However, I’ve noticed that not all spam messages get blocked by the system… especially the ones where other sellers send you messages begging for work. 
I am getting nothing but spam. I have not gotten a single genuine inquiry in 3 months since posting my first gig. Any idea what I can do to stop the spam and get noticed by real people who want my service??