question Are domains with hyphens worth nothing?

[kendra]

I know they are worth less than domains without hyphens, all other things being equal, but are they never worth anything?

I tried to get Sedo to accept diet-pills.com into their Great Domains auction. They rejected it because of domain quality. (Pay no attention to what I am asking for the domain on sedo.com; I specified a much lower reserve and the stated reason for rejection wasn't price - it was quality.)

I can't believe hyphenated domains are worth nothing. Yes, users might confuse them for the unhyphenated version so there should be a discount. But how much of a discount?

 

[The New Guy]

Sedo rejects many .com domains for great domains based on quality. They also let in many questionable ones that end up not even getting bids during the auction period.

 

[forge]

They are certainly not worth nothing, although it is much more difficult to find a buyer for hyphenated names. The European market seems to be the exception, particularly Germany.

In fact I had a potential buyer pass up my name for the hyphenated version at +$7,000. That is my special kind of luck with domains.

You might consider putting it on GoDaddy auctions with a reserve.

 

[Grego85]

Well let me start by saying Sedo is sort of stupid when it comes to their Great Domains Auction. I mean look at the one that starts tomorrow, it has 44 domains and I would say maybe 12 of them are actually great. I have been frustrated with them for rejecting a few of my applicants too, mostly because I feel mine are much better than some of the stuff they do accept.

I never really understood why the - in domain names is so bad until I went to work for a company that has a - in their domain. It's like hell simply explaining to average people what your email is and getting them to successfully send it. Dashes are just not normal to people who are basically on auto pilot when surfing the net.

 

[Vinod R]

Well let me start by saying Sedo is sort of stupid when it comes to their Great Domains Auction. I mean look at the one that starts tomorrow, it has 44 domains and I would say maybe 12 of them are actually great. I have been frustrated with them for rejecting a few of my applicants too, mostly because I feel mine are much better than some of the stuff they do accept.

I never really understood why the - in domain names is so bad until I went to work for a company that has a - in their domain. It's like hell simply explaining to average people what your email is and getting them to successfully send it. Dashes are just not normal to people who are basically on auto pilot when surfing the net.

Perfectly said I have felt the very same feeling many times, When I see what they have up for auction.

 

[Fliper]

Its your call. Same thing happened to .com unhyphenated 20 years back. If someone asked same question back then people would be divided. I consider .com hyphen better than .org and .net unhyphenated versions. It has its advantage too like DIETPILLS/.COM or dietpills/.com look worst than DIET-PILLS.COM they need to be put in more readable way DietPills/.com to eliminate confusion.

Ofcourse, if I were holding thousands and thousands of unhyphenated .com I would bash hyphenated domains but since I'm new domainer I can be neutral. If European can see the value then why can't we?

 

[Kate]

If European can see the value then why can't we?

Not so fast...
First of all, yes it can be a cultural thing. So attitudes vary depending on latitudes. America doesn't like hyphens. Germany does.

But that doesn't mean Europeans are eagerly buying hyphenated domains on the secondary market.
For regfee yes they will buy.
There is nothing that says hyphenated domains are as likely to sell as their non-hyphenated counterparts.

As always, check reported sales.

 

[Fliper]

Domain-Names/.com
$ 235,300.00 USD highest confirmed selling price for domain with dashes but I totally agree. I was just saying that rather than buying ntld domainers have better prospect in .com because 105million registered .com and numbers don't lie IMO

 

[Debt.tv]

You can make money off of hyphen domains, I have, but it takes time and you have to market it to potential end users. Forget sedo, I use it when the buyer asks to make the sale through sedo. I list them there but don't sell many because an end user placed a random bid. You have to search google, yahoo, bing...etc, find advertisers for you keywords and send them an email...(A GOOD EMAIL), not a crap email which we've all seen...there is a good namepros link below.

End User Email Samples and Email Templates

Good luck!

 

[Paully]

I know this is an older thread but it is an interesting topic. Reality is that it is no harder to type a - than it is to type a letter and sometimes using a hyphen in a name helps people understand the natural break in the words like diet-pills in the example above but a hyphen can work against you when the word could be split in different ways like for example the domain camgirlscams.com.

To some people that would read cam-girls-cams, to others it would read cam-girl-scams. A very different meaning and a different potential end user. If you registered it with a hyphen, you have to choose which end user you are going after (unless you register both versions of course!)

A domain without a hyphen will always be more valuable than the same domain with a hyphen, but how does a 3 letter [lus hyphen compare against a 4 letter?

Is a 3 letter and 1 hyphen domain such as w-tf.com more or less valuable than the domain would be if the - was a Q or a Z or any other letter that restricts the number of acronyms that would fit.

In the case of w-tf.com we will soon see. I have listed it on Flippa with no reserve.

 

[Ms Domainer]

e-vote.com just went for $$$$ at Go Daddy, so it depends...

 

[Paully]

I agree. A name like e-vote.com makes sense to me, as the hyphen and emphasis is in the "correct" place. Same as e-visa.com (which actually redirects to visa.com)

Domains like e-nvelope.com (which was registered 15 years ago) and en-velope.com which is strangely available don't.