I am a programmer and want to set up an E-commerce store selling a niche toy, how do I go about gauging demand without investing too much money? entrepreneur how earn by blogging blog

Hello I am in the U.S and being a programmer (python), I am somewhat familiar with the selling platforms and online marketing world. For a couple of months I've wanted to try my luck in E-commerce and I think I've found a very promising niche within the toy market. Not only that I "feel" like it would work, I have also done some research and it seems to be a healthy market so I've come up with a good marketing strategy that would garner page landings.

Before I jump into making a site and setting up my marketing campaigns here are some of my questions

1. So far the only supplier I've checked for the toys is Alibaba. I've never ordered from there and their selection seems a bit limited, are there other popular supplier websites? Also is it normal to message the supplier on there and ask for samples? The toys are pretty cheap.

2. Before I jump straight to ordering, I would like to collect some data on which toys would sell so I would like to launch a quick site. The issue is that I am not sure how to handle to fact that I would not actually have any in stock. Should I just place a coming soon label on the individual product's page? Do you consider this a good method to gauge whether or not my store would be successful?

3. This would be my first E-commerce I would set-up and while I know some e-commerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento) I've never worked with them so I am not sure which would work best for this niche. The popular platform seems to be Shopify but which are some of the underdogs and what are the fees? Also how does the fulfillment and payments work there? If you sell through Shopify, what are some of the things you dislike about it? I've been an Ebay seller and I've had nightmares with Paypal, so I would like to steer clear of them.

4. Those are my main concerns as of now but since I am new to it I would appreciate any other advice. Thanks

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