1. Need to check the white paper of the project
2. Check the developers team and their projects and experience
3. Check if the services or products which the Altcoin or ICO has to offer is realistic or not.
4. If it is an ICO then kindly check out the ratings in ICO ratings site and try to do as much results as you can to get clarity about the project and if they says they have reached softcap then check for the proofs because some of them are scams.
5. Never judge an Altcoin by it's price always go for features and do not assume if the value of altcoin is currently cheap then there are great scope for huge profit, it does not work that way
6. Always go for altcoin which has an active market ready products and look for the partners associated with them. ( This applies for ICO as well)
7. Do not get carried away by the % of discounts offered during ICO as the ICO price is just an assumption and it can vary, hence do not calculate your profits based on the discounts offered.
8. Before deciding to invest see if you can be a part of their bounty campaign as it will give you a better picture of their campaign.
I hope this will be helpful for you guys.
Regards,
Qualitywork
This is a relevant explanation and i wish you could have created two separate threads one for ICO alone and the other one for altcoins but still this is a nice piece of explanation which is a good lesson from a low ranking account.