This all is really complicated and country specific stuff. Rules regarding so called "VAT transfer" between companies seated in member states of EU should be the same everywhere in EU, but unfortunately are faaaar from that, because governments of member states implement the requirements for legislation that come from Brussels in the way as they prefer. So laws regarding this differ from EU country to EU country although they should be basically similar. But are not similar or some companies don�t know about them or completely ignore them � and that is problem. Problem for you, if you do business with such company � that is what I said. You can never know (know in advance) who may land on your personal photo store/website, and purchase there. If it is someone who doesn�t respect EU (and Slovak) rules, or doesn�t know about these rules, or doesn�t care at all about them (he just pays you with his PayPal, or credit card and leaves without further contact with you � supplying you all of his data) you as seller will have a serious problem with local financial bureau!! Because if you cannot supply all required data to the bureau, who EXACTLY was that buyer, such as ALL of his data, as I said before: his full personal/company name, full address, his company registration number, TAX ID, VAT ID (if applicable), etc. you will have a problem. Financial bureau doesn�t care about your problems at all (that your buyer purchased, and left without supping you all required data) � either you have ALL required data for EVERYONE with whom you do business � or you are in trouble, BIG trouble!!

Btw. printed receipt from PayPal is nothing for financial bureau here. For them it is just a scrap of paper, it has absolutely no legal weight here, it is nothing!!
Also Paypal (and other similar online payment systems) as whole is not recognized as bank account or anything like that here. I mean not recognized by laws. Of course in reality PayPal is fully working in Slovakia, but Slovak legislation doesn�t recognize it fully or laws regarding it totally contradict each other!! Not even people/employees in bureaus are sure how to treat it exactly � one bureau will say something, whereas the other bureau will say you something completely different, etc.!
(We still have a lot of old laws that doesn�t reflect this modern "virtual" times we live in.)

I really don�t know how to explain it to you in short here, because it is REALLY complicated and explaining it would be not good for anyone here anyway, because it would be way to specific for local legislation.

Simply this is not only about VAT, but also about TONs and TONs of country specific rules, requirements and regulations that must be met if you want to sell virtual goods (images) directly from your online store without middlemen.

And because of that, as I said, it is better (for me) in current state of things to leave bureaucracy on agencies that will take care of buyers of my images. And so to receive earned money from agencies. To receive money from company in one state such as from USA. Simply, because when your images are sold through agency, you don�t need to care who were ALL those buyers who purchased your images or whether they supplied their data to agencies or not. That is not your problem - it is problem of that agency.
For you as seller is important that you receive money for all sales of your images (as a whole) from agency and that you have all required data from who you received money, data of all agencies, such their business name, address, TAX IDs, etc. are known (when you ask their support they will tell you those).

So even if it means that agency will take some share (yes, sometimes really big share!) it is still better than being in permanent risk of problems which could be caused to you by direct selling website and crazy, sometimes even contradictory laws/bureaucracy required to run it!

Yes, it would be really great to have my own direct selling personal website.

I think about that a lot in recent times!

I actually think about programing/designing of my own personal direct selling website system, I mean completely new system from scratch (I actually started to develop it a little), through I have absolutely nothing against Symbiostock of course. I like Symbiostock idea, but I also prefer to go my own way, that�s why (if) I would create my own personal direct selling website system it would be from scratch and as completely new system. But the more I dive into it and consult it with accountants, and lawyers, the more I find that it would be quite complicated due bureaucracy.

So to conclude it.
To run direct selling personal website is maybe totaly easy in your country.
Maybe as easy as counting to 123, but not here, ... not here.

Yes, this is the biggest disadvantage of direct selling concept � crazy bureaucracy. 
Because you can never know (know in advance) who may came to your personal website photo store, purchase your images there and paradoxically bring you serious problems by his purchase � I mean do you more bad than good by simple purchase. Because when you don�t know all required data for this person/company in advance, such as VAT ID (especially whether it is valid), full billing address, company name, etc. (not just some email address or name from his Paypal, that is NOT sufficient itself) it can get you to serious legal trouble in European Union, at least in Slovakia (European Union member state) where I am from.

This is the biggest reason � possible legal/bureaucratic problems due EU legal/tax rules � why I am really hesitant with setting of my direct selling channel for my photos using my personal website.

In current state of things it is much better for me just to showcase my photos on my personal website and to send possible visitors to stock agency that will take care of all bureaucracy. I mean it is much easier from accounting/tax point of view for me to receive money from agencies, than to deal with all buyers separately, because that would require to be in touch with ALL of them prior to their purchase � to get/verify all of their data in advance. And this can be problem in direct selling personal portfolio website, because it is automatic in its nature. Buyer may came, purchase (what is of course very pleasing for author), but because it is automatic website and his data were not verified prior to purchase what happens if his data are incomplete or invalid (such as invalid VAT ID), guess what = serious problems! But not for him, but for you! You are required to know all of his data, such as company name/personal name, full billing address (street, numbers, state), company registration number, TAX ID, VAT ID.
If you receive money and you don�t know all of these data - from who that money came - every time you received them than you have a BIG problem!

So although Symbiostock is no doubt great idea it may be quite complicated to run it in some countries due crazy legal/tax rules.
I actually mentioned only tip of the iceberg how complicated this can really be!

I see this from Slovakia:

Download Royalty-Free stock photos, illustrations & images
for as low as 0.16 � / image or free

Probably they switch it based on location and currency used there.

No problems and no dramatic changes for me. I have 98.81% acceptance ratio at DP and my images are usually reviewed pretty fast, in hours usually, sometimes it takes a day or two at the most. Sales are also good for me! So far I have 500 files online with 356 sales total. Not bad, considering I am just enthusiast photographer taking pictures of landscapes, nature or cultural heritage pictures mostly. Such as pictures of historical towns, open-air museums, castles or castle ruins, also some domestic animals, horses, or cows, etc.
On the other side, I have no photos of people, nor still life, nor any sort of typical stock images there.

Regarding to usage of translation widgets. It is VERY likely that algorithms of most search engines are created in the way that they are able to distinguish usage of apparent translation widgets or any sort of similar automatic translation boxes placed on your website. This means that even when translation widget maybe dynamically generates new/separate page(s) for your website, pages fully translated in desired language(s), it is very likely that those pages will be poorly ranked (if ever) by search engine, do to reason of automatic translation widget being apparent and detected. Those automatically translated pages still may get indexed, as well as ranked on some position in SERP, but their ranking will be very likely much more poorer as if when real 100% native human speaking translation was used all over on your web site, or at last no automatic translation widget was detected. � When translation is fixed part of your website, such as all translated words on-site texts, titles, descriptions, keywords and other textual parts of your website are already stored in your database and served from there, etc.

So naturally, human translation is preferred for best SEO results and can be advised as the best way when one wants to take advantage of proper ranking with multiple language versions of personal portfolio website.

Remember that properly translated website, read 100% native human translation in specific language(s), will have potential to rank in SERP as well as original content from which it was originally translated!

However let face the true here. Search engines are ONLY artificial intelligences, they are ONLY machines, no matter how good they may be. It means that same goes for case when search engine is not smart enough to distinguish whether your translation is actually 100% native language or some combination of 100% human translation mixed with automatically translated parts.

Thus also combined approaches can be used, when done with care. Some parts of website can be translated automatically whereas other part can be done by human translator. This is for example how most of those "big" stock agencies do it, where crucial parts, such as TOS, or other important on-site texts of their websites are translated by native speaking humans, whereas titles, descriptions and keywords of large image preview pages are translated by automatic approaches and maybe also partially proofread and corrected by human translators.

But once again, for best results and also good user experience on your website, 100% human translation is of course by faaaaaar the best!
Both for SEO and visitors of your personal portfolio website(s)!

Thanks also for your positive comments Pilens and cthoman

Regarding to the bill for translations, yes it is rather expensive.
This is the biggest disadvantage of this approach.

So far I am using combined approach, which means, that parts of my website(s) and specific language versions are translated by native speaking human(s), whereas some parts are translated by automated systems and some parts combine the both approaches, when pre-translated automatic translation(s) are checked/proofread and corrected by native speaking people.

I probably forgot to mention that my personal websites are in development, as kind of my personal experiment with my own portfolio website(s). Remember, I am just enthusiast photographer.

So my personal portfolio websites are faaaaar from finished.
(As still unfinished experiment, but experiment, that has already proved to me as viable.)

Hi there, sorry but I don't understand much of your website, can we do searches? pretty much I can only see/open the picture on the homepage...

I am not sure what you mean by: "I can only see/open the picture on the homepage...", but as I mentioned, my website is in development. For now direct images searches are not possible, through it is possible to search by keywords of images, when those are clicked on large image preview pages.

Nice advice. Your descriptions sound kind of long. You would probably be better served to put that as regular text and not as a meta description (if that is what you meant).

I mean long image descriptions surely as on-site text, text around images, not text in meta description tag, if this is what you are talking about. Btw. when speaking about meta description tags. I am going to experiment also with them soon (need time for their re/writing and translations), in terms of changing them to totally unique text. Text specially written to be put in meta description tag of HTML header, for my large image preview pages. Not some auto generated text based on image title, or on-site description, but another absolutely unique (different than real on-site description) text. Text about 160 characters long describing image in the way that I believe will be best clicked on SERP.

Have you received any questions/emails in other languages?

Yes, I have been contacted by people of various nationalities, people looking for purchasing of my photos and graphics. Most of them usually had no problem with further communication in English, through as I mentioned, they initially looked for images in search engine using their own mother tongue.

Initially I intended to write these suggestions of mine to one of those Symbiostock threads, just as a short reply to posts questioning about personal website SEO.
But how I was writing my reply, text of my reply got bigger and bigger, so I changed my mind and decided to put it to separate thread here.

My suggestions are concerned and applicable on most types of personal portfolio websites in general, not only on Symbiostock type of website.
(Through I am fan of Symbiostock idea!)   

So here are my suggestions that I consider crucial when developing any type of personal portfolio website.
I believe these can possibly increase website traffic picked from search engines for almost any type of portfolio website!

1.) Unique on-site text, titles, descriptions and keywords!
If possible try to use unique on-site text. Especially unique titles, descriptions and keywords of your images. Surely this requires some time and effort put to rewriting/rekeywording of your images, but it will help you with better ranking in online waters full of those "big" agencies.

2.) Long image descriptions!
Try to use long descriptions for your images whenever possible. By long descriptions I mean descriptions that are at least 200-300 source words long! Of course text must be, more or less, relevant to image.

More on-site text can increase likeness that you will match people's searches for word(s) or phrase(s) contained in your description. Thus it will mean increased traffic for your website picked from search engine and increased website traffic ALWAYS means raised chances of bumping into some buyer(s)! Yes of course, most of people that you will pick from search engines by those long descriptions will not be image buyers (for now). For example, they can be people who are just looking for something that is mentioned in description of your image. But the more visitors you pick the bigger your chances will be to finally find some buyer(s).

This is game of numbers and probability!

Simply: More traffic is always good for your website, even if those visitors are not image buyers at the time when they are picked.

Through, initially, they maybe not image buyers looking for purchasing of your images - right at that exact moment when they are searching for some keyword(s) or phrase(s) - they will be always at least quasi relevant visitors to your website, because your website will contain titles, descriptions, keywords that will be, more or less, relevantly describing what can be directly seen on your images, or indirectly describing some story behind what can be seen on image. Such as on photo of castle with it's history in description, etc.

For example: Someone may be initially searching just for information about history of Orava castle in Slovakia, history that is mentioned on large image preview page in long description of some of my Orava castle photos, that my portfolio website contains. But later this person may decide that not only text contained in description, but also images of Orava castle she saw on website will be suitable for flyer she wants to create for her family owned guest-house, as a small presentation brochure, which will showcase all nearby attractions for tourists and thus possible visitors of her guest-house. This is just one of many real life examples, that happened to me in the past and the story behind of how this customer found my website was revealed to me when that lady contacted me through form on my website and we further communicated together.

You never know who your visitors are and why they are searching for what they are searching at that time. They can change their mind later (thus become image buyer(s)), suddenly recall of your website and your images they saw there at time of their last visit, come back, trying to contact you about purchase, or purchase your images directly.
(Depending on how your website is setuped. Whether you sell directly from your website, or just showcase your work, etc.)

But again, the more traffic the better! This is always true! Even if it is quasi irrelevant traffic - quasi irrelevant in terms that it may be consisting of non image buyer(s) at that time, but people sill quasi relevant to content seen on image. Anyway there is always chance that visitor who was not interested in purchasing images may became interested later some time in the future.

Here are some examples of what I mean by long descriptions for images:

http://www.jareso.com/photo/73/water-sawmill-in-kvacianska-valley-slovakia/
http://www.jareso.com/photo/69/budatin-castle-in-zilina-slovakia/
http://www.jareso.com/photo/131/southern-side-of-famous-orava-castle-slovakia/
http://www.jareso.com/graphic/106/energetically-efficient-car/

3. TONs of language versions!
And now my favorite way of increasing traffic. Translations, translations and translations! Offering your content in many languages is the easiest, yet the most effective way, how to harmlessly multiply (rise) traffic of website many times! Translations can artificially expand count of image preview pages contained on your website. Preview pages that will be indexed by search engines as new, original and unique content, because translated text is not considered duplicated content in terms of SEO! Imagine that you have for example 1000 unique images in your stock portfolio which means only about 1000 large preview image pages that can be indexed on your website by search engines. That is very low number in huge waters of internet content.

Of course you, as no doubt very talented and creative stock artist, can say to yourself that you will work even much harder and that way you will make even more and more new quality creative stock works, photos or illustrations, to expand your portfolios and so the counts of new images that will be added on your website.
Yes, that is of course very right way of thinking! But honestly, unless your are not some big stock factory, it is very slooooow way go! (Through, creatively it may be right way!) But, how much new content - content that can be put and indexed on your personal website as large image preview pages are you able to produce a day, a week, a month?
Few tens, maybe one hundred images, maybe even little more, or so, but that is still not enough.
Too slooooow results!

You need to pick traffic, bump into some buyers, rise chances for your sales right now, right here! Not after some years of long waiting! So I suggest something faster, something that can be started right now and done faster (than production of new content) - translations!
(Of course you may still produce new content throughout working on your translations.)

Translate your images that are contained on your website in form of on-site text (text around your images, you need to look at it from point of view of search engine's bot reading your website) to as much languages as possible! And than you will see something!

I mean translate titles, descriptions and keywords of your images to lets say 50 languages and all of sudden you will have huge portfolio with big amount of virtually new content! Let's count together now on our example of 1000 unique images in portfolio, 50 languages X 1000 images equals 50 000 large preview pages with virtually unique content � new virtually unique images for your website!

That is nice, isn�t it?

That is something to feed endless stomach of search engine with! Amount of 50 000 large preview pages (on website of average unknown artist) that is count that can be almost compared to size of smaller stock agency! Imagine how much people will such count of 50 000 image preview pages pick from search engine results pages (SERP) once when all of those 50 000 large preview pages will be indexed and properly ranked by search engine! And that can be only the beginning! There are more languages in the world than 50, so artificially expanding it to 100 000 or more large preview pages is possible.

Remember! This way of approach is absolutely legitimate and it is in compliance with terms of search engine's webmaster guides!
Translations are not considered duplicated content in terms of SEO, they relatively easily create new content for your website!
(Artificial, but still legitimate content!)

Little secret! <- Most buyers don�t search in English for images they want to purchase!
It is the main factor why translations should be done for every (personal) portfolio website!

Most of people and so those much wanted image buyers search internet for images in their own mother tongue!
Not in English language!
To assume that image buyers search for images mostly in English is totally WRONG!
It is the most common mistake that English speaking webmasters make!
 
Really, no matter how strange it may be, but believe it or not, it is like that! Most image buyers don�t use English when searching for images!
Don�t get me wrong. They may be very good speakers of English, but if they have choice of using their own native language they do so! Almost always!

If your website doesn�t contain that particular language, it will be not indexed in search engine for those targeted keyword(s) or phrase(s) and thus you will loose possible image buyer(s), just because you will not satisfy their need for mother tongue!

Remember you need to pick your visitors first, this is crucial � bring them to your website from search engine's result pages � if you fail here, the possible buyer will be lost for you!
That is probably not what you are looking for. Or is it?!??

As I already mentioned, he may be very good speaker of English! Definitely good enough speaker of English, that after he will land on your website, he will be able to further communicate, for example through contact form on your website, with you about the details of his purchase, or other things concerning your images, etc.
But if you loose him in first part of chain, crucial moment of picking him from search engine, no other parts of chain will follow!

That is great news to hear!
I wish you daveh900 (and everyone else of course) much more of sales like this!

I also have some images older than 4 years and because DT announced their new paid approach to free images I decided to give my old images to free section by default � just out of curiosity � to see whether they will be downloaded under this new DT free/paid scheme.
Yes, I realize prices are somehow low at this new DT free/paid scheme, but I want to see what impact � if ever � will this new DT free/paid scheme have on my regular sales and sales of my free images.
(And than I will act accordingly. Keep them free, or delete them later, based on my observations.)

We will check the browser issue.

Here is dump of if my configuration if it will help you somehow:

Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0
Monitor/Display: DELL U3011, 2650x1600 pixels, 32-bit color depth
OS: Windows 7 Professional
System: Intel i7-3930K s2011, MB MSI X79A-GD45, 16GB (4x4GB) RAM, HDD 2TB, VGA GeForce 560GTX-Ti 1GB

The problem with your website when it is accessed through my Mozilla Firefox is still there.
I tried restarting of my Firefox and even whole PC to see whether it is not some problem with my Firefox. <- The idea that problem can be even on my side came to my mind because error message on your website is now in Slovak (with the same meaning as that one in English). The language to which my Windows 7 is primary set.
Anyway it is strange. As I said maybe it is just me, maybe it is everyone from Slovakia with Firefox , I am not sure.
But this never happened before and it only happens on your website.

Am I the only one for who is this website not working?!?!

When I visit the link:
http://www.geostockphoto.com

All I can see is ONLY blank white page with:

CDbException
CDbTransaction is inactive and cannot perform commit or roll back operations.

Have You Ever Entered Your Name in a Google Images Search?

Yes, almost every day (sometimes even multiple times a day)!

But absolute majority of image buyers unfortunately don�t search by author's real name nor nickname.
Unless it is some BIG name in the stock industry.

Most of buyers always search (only) by keywords and phrases/short sentences containing (key)words describing images they are looking for.
So (long and ideally unique) descriptions, titles, and keywords (in this particular order) of your images play much more important role when you want to gain good visibility for your images to possible buyers. This is especially true in case of author's personal website.