To be clear: Investing was and will be a risky thing. You should clearly understand what you're doing with your money if its thrown away.
Short Info
As a miner for ETH I'm always getting some Ether which I got for playing around. So what to do with them? First at all I'm having my ethers stored in myetherwallet. Why? Cause i got the private key. If you got coinbase you don't. So thats the big difference. The second one is the point, that its compatible with ERC20 tokens. So how to identify a good token? You can visit for example a Website https://www.coingecko.com/ico?locale=en or similar. Then we need to see the following parts which is important:
Checklist for you
1.) Do they have a robust Dev Team? Sorry designers you do nice work, but at some point we need a good coder team instead of just CEO's and people who can make nice whitepapers. Check the guys in Google and lets see if they know what they're doing. Whats their philosophy?
2.) Is there already some code on GIT? Check if there is more than just 1 Commit per year :-). Its important to have a running prototype so we can be sure its no SCAM.
3.) Check the Website are they using a robust Corporate Identity, Logo and are their Homepage secured by SSL?
4.) Check also if Slack and Twitter contains users and followers. You can buy followers on lots of websites, so check if they really got a community. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Slack, GIThub etc.
5.) In the risky ICO hype we need to know that there are lots of GIThub Forks. Litecoin is one brother of Bitcoin with some difference. There are lots of forks there. Take care that you invest in something which has potential. Status, Golem, Augur, Blockcat, Ripple or TenX. I know guys that that here is polarizing now and everybody says something different. But the discussion is exactly the point that: "Maybe I can show you the way through the door, but you need to open it yourself". Thanx!
You made your decision and want to invest
A) Open or create a new Wallet on MyEtherWallet also MEW called : https://www.myetherwallet.com/
B) Click "Create new Wallet".
C) Download and Store Keystore File. Then Click Continue. Save Adress and then Login or Click "Send Ether & Token". Then enter your private Key or select: Keystore File (UTC / JSON) . Then Upload that Keystore File which you downloaded right now.
Congrats! You got a MEW Account and you're ready to get tokens form an ICO
A) Now make your decision which ICO you want to choose. For my example I'm using EOS Tokens. Why? Cause when you're reading my article the ICO is still running. Normally an ICO is during about 30-60 days. So EOS is running over a year. Crazy but true.
B) Visit https://eos.io/instructions
C) Scroll down and look for an ETH Contract Adress. In the case of EOS it is under the point: "How to Claim Tokens". Copy the adress. Take care also that you're on the right website and not another one. I wont write the token adress here and do not send tokens to people commenting here, that they got the right contract adress, as it will be fake and your money will be wasted. But the adress is beginning with: 0xd0a6*****************************.
D) Login into Myetherwallet and select how many ETH you want to invest. Copy&Paste the adress from the EOS Website Starting with 0xd0a6***************************** and check if they got Advanced Instructions. In the EOS Case there are no special instructions for getting the tokens.
set Amount to Send to 0 and Gas Limit to 3141592
Click Generate Transaction
Then click "Send Transaction".
C) Your ETH will be sent now to the EOS Contract adress. You can also check it when clicking on "View transaction" or similar text on the green info bar below. It takes about 2-5 minutes to be confirmed on the blockchain.
D) Now you should get your tokens from EOS contract into MEW. On a Desktop Screen on right side you should see your tokens and their value. The value will be shown when the tokens are traded on exchanges like Bittrex, Poloniex, Liqui.io etc. After that you can send the tokens to the Exchange Adress and SELL your tokens. So you can get back your money.
So my conclusion is that alot of current ICO's aren’t really compatible with an investors interests because there is no way to guarantee that they will receive anything from the sale;Also the tokens are not attached to equity. So even if they were you would still have to trust that the company published the final product and now you see that its important to see some running alpha software or tests which you can examine!