Although there are a lot of them out there, ICOs are still very profitable as a whole if you sort through all the noise and invest in meaningful projects with reasonable market caps. From previous threads on this sub, Substratum, Regalcoin and several others are up 2x-5x from their ICO price, as well as many others up by smaller amounts (REQ, etc). As such, I'm going to list some of the top choices I've seen on this sub here and similar subs, and I'll update this list as other projects are suggested.
Upfiring -
https://www.upfiring.com - ICO is live. Incentivized P2P file-sharing is a really interesting concept that could have a lot of practical use. Project is definitely undervalued at the current ICO price - similar projects like Filecoin and Sia have 15x-20x higher market caps, so the potential for returns is pretty high due to the project's low market cap.
Grid+ -
https://gridplus.io - ICO starts next week. The whitepaper itself is enough to show how seriously awesome this project is. It's going to be extremely interesting to watch how this one plays out, as a decentralized energy market is something we haven't seen yet and there's a lot of intelligent people involved in this project.
Ripio - ICO goes live today. Existing credit networking company that facilitates lending between two peers using smart contracts. It's a really cool use of Ethereum's smart contracts, and it's nice to see large companies get involved in the crypto space.
EnjinCoin -
https://www.enjincoin.io - ICO is finishing up, just over 90% complete. Cryptocurrency for gamers is going to be huge, and the $25 million dollar market cap is low, so potential is high. Also a very established company that has a good community behind it. This one has a lot of supporters and positivity around it, and you know for sure that the token will be used and integrated into an already-popular gaming platform.
Raiden - ICO is ongoing. "The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution, enabling near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments. It’s complementary to the Ethereum blockchain and works with any ERC20 compatible token. The Raiden project is work in progress. Its goal is to research state channel technology, define protocols and develop reference implementations." Very interesting project with a booming github repo and great marketing so far. Definitely worth looking into.
Dimensions Network -
https://dimensions.network - ICO live in early/mid-November, new crypto exchange where token holders collect 15% of the trading fee profits. Really like the concept. Looks like COSS with a better UI/more potential.
Gladius - Cyber protection network, ICO November 1st
Let's sift through the huge amount of projects and find what's worth it. I know there are a few more out there that I'm forgetting, so keep the suggestions flowing and I'll update the list.
I'm currently watching Ripio, Upfiring and Grid+.
Though up firing does have a lot of competitors. I was wondering why isn't Datum on there as well? Their ICO starts today and you should still be able to whitelist yourself if you still haven't if i remember correctly.
Enjincoin should raise a fair amount as well. Keep an eye on it.