How do you approach researching the market?

Hello, so i have made a post not long ago regarding positioning myself as a print on demand seller on etsy and other marketplaces.

A lot of the answers were to do a market research regarding trends, niches, prices, competitors, seo and etc.

Since market research is a really wide spectrum, how have you started researching the market, what have you included? What tools have you used? Besides e rank and google trends that arent that useful, are there any others?

Or would it be simply better to hire someone on fiverr for example to do it for me? Is this something that i could do alone without any help or is it more advisable to do this with a professional?

Since im a student i would really like to start with as low costs as possible regarding setting up a print on demand store so im really thinking about hiring someone as my last option.

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Thank you for your answers and time.