Hyphen .com vs. regular .net

[Matt 26z]

The .com I want is taken. Hasn't been used for years, but the owner is asking way too much.

So that leaves the .net choice, or putting a hyphen in the .com.

I'm more interested in branding the name than trading traffic and whatnot, so the domain is important.

I'm worried that if I go with the .net, people will remember it as the .com. If I use the hyphen, people won't remember that either. But maybe I am wrong.

What do you guys think?

[Lycanthrope]

I would personally use the hyphenated domain and make sure you place a big "bookmark us" link somewhere.

[Matt 26z]

That's what I'm leaning towards.

If I go with the .net I'd have to brand the name and also the extension.

Whereas with the hyphen, it's just the name since .com is the standard.

[Veterans Day]

hyphens ROCK

[Doctor Dre]

When I had my tgp, my biggest one, it was under a .net... I offered him almost as much as my tgp was worth to him for the domain and he refused...

[Matt 26z]

Kind of interesting...

I just ran a poll on a mainstream site I have. Ended it after 100 responses. Over 50% of the people say they can not type the hyphen without looking down at their keyboard to find it.

This doesn't necessarily effect branding, but at the very least it means the average surfer does not routinely type the hyphen. So for them, this is pretty much the equivalent of a long hard to type domain.... which increases the psychological cost of the website.

I had no idea the percentage would be that high.

[llporter]

THe SEs don't care about the hyphen

[xclusive]

Go with the hyphen