hyphen in domain names, what are the pro's and con's

[jhellyer]

Hi,

Pretty new to this and learning the hard way at times, but I was wondering what the pro-s and con's are of having a hyphen in a decent domain name?

I have recently hand regd:

fast-finance
i-travel
i-finance
i-banking

Hoping they may be worth developing or reselling in the future? (I can develop most for my business if need be, as I am a finance broker).

Any advice, help or insight would be so greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Jason

 

[sp@rky13]

In terms of readability a hyphen can be good though there are mixed feelings on this. The i- ones I would have to say aren't the way to use a hyphen if you were going to

 

[FirstPageResults]

Only really worth decent money where there is high competition and you have generic terms or if your strategy is purely SEO.

credit-cards
home-loans
etc

It's also a common mistake to add a prefix like 'e' or 'i' to a generic term imo as it generally means the name is only "brandable"... essentially that means it's worth nothing unless you value add to it.

Rule of thumb is to stick with generic terms/phrases and if you need to ask for a valuation and explain it's meaning then it's not worth much..

We have all reg'd a few duds starting out..

 

[jhellyer]

Thanks for the straight up advice, much appreciated !

 

[Chris.C]

Avoid them. If you're not a developer they are going to be hard (if not impossible) to resell.

 

[Shane]

I've had a bit of sucess with developing names with hyphens. I even have a .net.au with a hyphen that ranks reasonably well! But like FPR said, it's really only worthwhile with strong keywords.

 

[jhellyer]

strong keywords

would I be right in thinking that:

travel, finance, banking & casino are strong keywords (even if they have a i- in front of them)??

 

[snoopy]

Wipes out most of the value, 99% plus. They become much harder to sell and the price significantly lower when they can be sold (for any extension). Would avoid these names personally if you are hoping for resale.

 

[jhellyer]

once again, thanks for the advice guys, learning slowly. Gunna hang up the guns now and do some research for a while until I understand this better.

 

[Shane]

would I be right in thinking that:

travel, finance, banking & casino are strong keywords (even if they have a i- in front of them)??

They are definitely strong keywords, but it's the 'i' that bothers me. If you wanted those keywords with hyphens, I'd more so be looking at things like home-finance or online-casino etc, not i-finance or i-casino.

 

[Chris.C]

once again, thanks for the advice guys, learning slowly. Gunna hang up the guns now and do some research for a while until I understand this better.

Knowledge is power.



That said, don't be too disheartened, I'd bet my bottom dollar pretty much every member on these forums in their earlier years (probably still do from time to time) registered tons of junk domains that they were eventually forced to let expire.

What differentiates a good domainer from the rest is ability to learn from mistakes quickly.

 

[snoopy]

That said, don't be too disheartened, I'd bet my bottom dollar pretty much every member on these forums in their earlier years (probably still do from time to time) registered tons of junk domains that they were eventually forced to let expire.

Yep, just keep the "tons" as low as possible.

 

[jhellyer]

I suppose I was thing along the lines of the new age of i- meaning internet, such as internet-banking (i-banking) etc....and with the new iphones, iapps, etc etc etc. Oh well...ya live and learn...lol

Got a bit ahead of myself when I saw that i-report.com and ireport.com just sold to some big television network for $750,000.

One day maybe..

 

[jhellyer]

What about rv-sales.com.au ?

720 local exact searches a month an 14,800 global ?

I gotta get one good one sooner or later...lmao

 

[snoopy]

What about rv-sales.com.au ?

720 local exact searches a month an 14,800 global ?

I gotta get one good one sooner or later...lmao

When was the last time any hyphenated .com.au sold for a price other than peanuts?

Take namebio.com and look at recent .com.au sales, I just looked through all .com.au sales for this year and couldn't find a .com.au hyphen sale above $250. Even web-designer.com.au only got that.

So if you take a name like rv-sales.com.au, it probably has a 1% chance of selling for $200 each year in my view, then you've got a tricky sales process + GST. ie a portfolio of names like that is a clear loss maker.

 

[Ash]

I always think of rv as being an american term... imo