I've just been told that people avoid buying domains that have dashes (-) in them. I'm making a new proxy website and I've registered filter-ip.com for the domain. I need to know before I open the website whether or not it will effect the proxy sale. I'd appreciate some comments.
The main reason is that if you were to spread the website name by word of mouth, filterip.com would be easier than filer(dash)ip.com. Example: "Go see the profile I have at my dash space dot com." My-space.com is just not as marketable. When making domain names, simple is usually better. As for filter-ip.com, I wouldn't say its going to completely nullify any value it has. The dash does serve a purpose, and a proxy site probably won't be advertised by word, just on-screen. I would keep the filter-ip.com, but if you have the extra $ for reg fee, go ahead and get filterip.com if its not taken. A site like this will be probably be more valuable according to content and traffic than the actual dash mark.
SEs don't mind the dashes, however, I would avoid them because if you ever yell at someone "Go to my-site.com," they will probably go to mysite.com
If you are just selling the domain only, yes a hyphen hurts the value dramatically. From an SEO point, it helps. If you are selling a proxy site with revenue, it wouldn't matter much as buyers would only look at the revenue
I dont recommend hyphened domain name for sites that will be largely community based sites because as stated above doesnt make for good work of month. Although for proxy sites, heavy content sites, and sites that will get most traffic from search engines i dont think hyphened domain will be much of a problem. It really depends what you are going to do with the site.