Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency, however, there exist quite a few cryptocurrencies, with new coins being created daily. The most important step is obtaining a wallet to store the coins. There are many options available, however, some coins only have one option.
There are essentially two kinds of wallets, a core wallet, which requires the entire blockchain to be downloaded, and lite wallets, also called electrum wallets. These wallets are most commonly used on a mobile phone, and do not require the blockchain to be downloaded and instead only reads some of the data. Using a core wallet is very slow to initially sync with the blockchain, but enables mining or minting of the coin, as well as helping to secure its blockchain. However, a mobile wallet can allow a much greater ease of use, at the cost of security. A great mobile app that supports a wide range of coins is the coinomi wallet app. There are similar mobile apps that I strongly suggest to avoid, as some users have reported losing coins and that is the jaxx wallet. I only recommend the coinomi app, as well as the mycelium app. The coinomi app is currently in development, if you have problems do not hesitate to contact their support team. They have always been very helpful and fast to respond. If you wish to instead use a core wallet, each must be downloaded and synced individually.
Once a wallet has been setup, the next step is to buy coins with a credit or debit card. Again there are many ways to do this, the most popular is to signup for an account with coinbase. They require some identity and bank account verification, and allow the buying and selling of bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin. If these are the coins you want to have, this is all you need to do. However, if you want to have other coins such as dogecoin, digibyte, reddcoin, byteball, etc. It is necessary to buy bitcoin, ethereum or litecoin and trade it for another coin. Once again, there are many options to do this. The easiest way is using a website called shapeshift.io, which is also integrated into the coinomi walet, however, they have higher fees, and also do not offer all the coins available. A better way to trade coins is to register an account at an online coin exchange such as poloniex.com, bittrex.com or novaexchange.com. Each of these exchanges offer different advantages, for example, poloniex.com is very popular and has a large volume allowing large funds to remain liquid. Smaller and less popular exchanges such as yobit offer many unique coins not available anywhere else.
A few tips to reduce the risk of lost coins.
Backup your passphrase or .dat file. This is essential, it is best to encrypt this by creating a zip file with a strong password.
Use a strong password! Many people think they use a strong password but do not, check your password strength here https://howsecureismypassword.net/.
Remember your password! There is nothing worse than locking yourself out of your coins, so I suggest to create ONE strong password for things, instead of trying to remember a billion different ones, avoid keeping a list of passwords!
Do not keep your coins on any online wallet! This includes coinbase, as well as every online coin exchange, unless they specifically provide you with a private key or recovery phrase. However, even having the private key may not ensure your coins safety, as in the case of gridcoin, the core wallet's import private key function does not work.
HODL! This is only some friendly advice to keep the coins you manage to obtain, as I have already found out, it can be sad to sell coins when they are very cheap and miss out on great profits. Of course the point of money is to spend it, just remember the guy who bought a pizza with 10,000 bitcoins, worth well over $27 million USD.