A question I received recently is if I had $50 a month where should I start dabbling in crypto? Well, my first response I thought of was , would you be ok going to the atm, withdrawing $50, and throwing it in the trash each month? As much as I believe in crypto this could be the harsh reality we wake up to tomorrow if the stars align and crypto becomes illegal or worthless. If you don't like the sound of this take that $50 and put it in your 401k or other retirement account. If you're ok with walking into a casino and putting $50 a month on 10 in roulette then we can keep going.
I feel like i should disclose I have never purchased crypto with fiat. I have "earned" it through faucets, forums, reddit, and steemit. I am not a financial advisor and am just providing my opinion below.
Select 1 or 2 Cryptos
Go to Coin Market Cap and look through the top 10 or 20 coins and find one coin that you like two at the most. Then spend the next day or two researching the coin. How does it work, why are you interested in it, how long has the coin been around, are there any negative articles about said coin and why are there problems? Learn as much as you can about the coin and then if you want to invest continue to the next step if not repeat the process. Be suspicious of all good or bad articles that you read. People could just be trying to bring the coin up or tear the coin down based on there own personal gains.
Once you find your coin click on it, for this example were going to take a look at Monero (XMR). The first thing you should look at is the price. If you're trading in USD you should focus on the dollar amount or if you're planning on trading with Bitcoin the BTC value, in this case 0.01769ish. The second is the 24 hour volume. If this volume starts to get low it will be harder to trade, but if you're trading coins in the top 10 or 20 you shouldn't have to worry about this. Circulating supply is important as if there is a low number of coins this could make the value of the coin seem higher than a coin like Ripple (XRP) that has a ton of coins. Four is the meat and potatoes of the coins and where you should spend a majority of your time researching the website, reddit activity, white paper, etc.
If you scroll down a little further you'll see the markets tab. This tab is important because it will show you on what exchanges the coin is traded and with what volume. Again you'll need to determine if your trading with USD (bitfinex) or BTC (poloniex or bittrex).
Warning, be sure to research exchanges as well. In crypto history a lot of money has been "stolen/disappeared" off of exchanges. If you plan on only doing a few trades a month it is smart to take whatever crypto your not trading actively off of exchanges. I use bittrex, but don't trust it any more/less than any other exchange. Remember if you don't own the private key the crypto really isn't in your hands.