There are many ways to start a home business online, and few are easier than eBay - the world's largest online auction site. However, there is one critical condition - you have to know what to sell and how to sell it. That is exactly what David Guindon's software program Hot Item Finder claims to do.

After purchasing the software, I had huge hopes of it delivering on it's promise of finding hot items on eBay. Though there were times when certain features would not work, I found Dave to be quick to not only fix the problem but also offer a new updated release for everyone. In fact free updates for life is one of the major benefits to Hot Item Finder.

You may not have heard of David Guindon. Currently working on a master's degree in electrical engineering, he developed Hot Item Finder to aid his own eBay research. Since then he's gone on to earn a reputation for quality and creativity.

Hot Item Finder makes doing research on eBay a snap by allowing you to search for products by keyword or category and then filter the search based on the number of bids, the current price, and more. But what I especially like is the category search by completed listings. I can pick a category, tell the software that I want auctions already completed with 20 or more bids and voila! I have a hot list of products I know are selling as well as links to the completed auctions so I can see what makes them sell so well.

Dave promises on his website that you can "find all the hot items on eBay in minutes." Well, it may take just a little longer than "minutes" but I created lists of products amazingly fast.

I will say, it took me a few tries to get the hang of the software, but after playing around with it I was moving around like a pro. I have no doubt that anyone, regardless of experience, can use Hot Item Finder to it's fullest potential and find out exactly what to sell and what to steer clear of.

I think the filtering feature is what really makes Hot Item Finder powerful. Frankly, you can find all the same information on eBay, but that can be very tedious and labor-intensive. Simply being able to filter out items based on bids and selling price is a huge time-saver. This software tells you what's selling, for how much and what people are willing to bid. It's fantastic marketing intelligence. I used it to auction 18 items. All 18 sold with double-digit bids and closed within 5% of my target price range. I was hooked.

One improvement I think that can be made, however, is somehow listing the starting bid along with the closing bid. This way, as a seller you can quickly see how effective some listing strategies are over others. But who's being picky?

Finding the right products to sell on eBay is obviously critical to success. Sifting through thousands of auctions at eBay to find a few winners can be overwhelming and possibly discouraging. Hot Item Finder makes the job the proverbial "piece of cake" - and does it with style. You can check it out by going to http://www.hotitemsnow.com. Overall, I have to say that Hot Item Finder is an absolute MUST GET.

Hopefully one day, Dave will figure out a way to make Hot Item Finder even more explosive by somehow including other auction sites such as Yahoo Auctions and Amazon Auctions. Until then, Hot Item Finder more than fits the bill.

Chris Custer is a freelance writer and publisher of the eAuction Gazette, a newsletter that provides tips and techniques for auction selling success. Subscribe by going to http://www.eauctiongazette.com