oh the age old discussion of hyphen names vs. non-hyphenated. I believe there is nothing wrong with developing a hyphenated name,
SO LONG AS you also own the non-hyphenated version.
Hyphenated names may work fine on the net, with
seo, hosting, and other non-human variables. Unfortunately, with the human factor calculated in, hyphenated names lose their pizazz, credibility, and utility almost entirely. Take for example the difficulties with advertising a hyphenated web address using the radio as your medium. What about advertising via word of mouth? Try explaining to someone that your web address is not
www.HomeImprovement.com, but is Home DASH Improvement dot com, and see if they remember to use the hyphen 10 minutes later. Even if advertising via print, or on television, the hypen is just simply too problematic. If you're lucky, most people will barely remember the keywords in your webaddress, let alone the hyphen and where to place it.
Again, unless you own both the hyphen and non-hyphenated counterpart, it is futile to develop just the hyphen alone. Advertising problems are just the beginning. What about your competition? How silly would it be to open a new shop up across the street from your major competitor, and your shop has no signage or lighting on the outside to compete with the neon lit storefront, large boulevard billboard, and the word of mouth (and/or other advertising) your competitor already enjoys. The point is, if you only develop a hyphenated name, and your competition owns and operates the non-hyphen, you will be losing a tremendous amount of business to your competition. Would you open a new business knowing from the beginning that you will be losing
50% or more of your market to someone else? Now take that scenario one step further and assume your non-hyphen counterpart has a registered mark with the Patent & Trademark Office that pre-dates your domain registration. Do you think that developing the hyphenated version will be somewhat confusingly similar to your competitor's mark? Do you think that will expose you to a possible UDRP action? Why would anyone go into anything knowing they have a huge chance of losing from the very start; losing customers, losing money, losing your reputation, losing your business and its name.
My advise is to
not register and develop a hyphenated domain name, unless you already own (and/or developed) the non-hyphen of the same.
-Joe
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