With or without the hyphen, it's two words. But for the purposes of the value of the site, rather than pedantry, it probably doesn't much matter.

Are you the author?

If you're new to marketing: domains with a dash in them are considered seconds rate to domains that don't have a dash.

Yes I am! And I totally get it - I'm pretty much a branding geek myself. I've been debating whether to remove the dashes even when I first started building the site, and this just gives me more reason to remove them from the word list. Stay tuned for the next update! ;)

Yeah I wouldn’t ever use a hyphenated domain for your primary site. Ok to register it and 301 redirect it to your site, but if you use it for your primary site you will lose traffic to the non hyphenated version.

Gotcha! That's it then - the hyphenated sites are out! :D

Unless it's a term like hip-hop. Then I think the hyphen is appropriate and even sought after.