What does the coin accomplish? Is it special, or is it the same as any other coin out there?
I'm going to share you my quick tips on researching new coins to invest in. Researching is key if you want to find a good coin before it's mainstream, and is essential if you're going longterm.
Step 1: Go to Coinmarketcap.com
Scroll through the coins. Open ones in a new tab that don't have a joke of a name. Some good coins might have a terrible name, but you're trying to do some mass-separation here and don't have time to check them all.
Step 2: Now that you have 10 or 15 tabs open with some new coins, check the graphs. Do you like what you see? I can't tell you what a "healthy" graph looks like, but some are sketchy and if you don't trust it (absurd spikes, missing days, total flatlines), then simply close the tab. There's another 800 cryptos for you to see.
Step 3: Check the Social tab
Do they have a twitter? What do they post? Are they Active? If they're posting about their price, that's a red flag. You want a coin posting about their development. If you like what you see, keep going
Step 4: Do they have a roadmap
A roadmap is kind of like an agenda. What do they hope to accomplish in the future? What have they accomplished?
You can usually find a roadmap on their Twitter. Are they constantly working on the coin, or are the developers not very motivated? If you can't find a roadmap at all, or any info about the development, find a new coin. Otherwise, continue with your research.
Step 5: Community
Is there a community around this coin? I don't just mean Reddit, lots of coins have their own forum. Does the community just HODL, or do they contribute? If you see an active community working on the coin and contributing to the coin's github page, this is a green flag. Is the community talking about the price of the coin, or are they talking about it's uses and values?
Step 6: History
Where did this coin come from? What did they hope to accomplish? Are they different from any other coin?
I'm not saying ICOs are bad for a coin, but if the ICO totally sold out the coin then you should reconsider investing. Keep in mind, most successful coins started with some hype and then died down for up to and exceeding a year. This isn't necessarily a bad sign. History of a coin is important. Go to some successful coins on Coinmarketcap and zoom in on the graph. Maybe between the start of the coin and right before it got popular. What did it look like? How traumatizing were the falls and crumbling values before it took off?
Getting a feel for how cryptos moved in the past may help you in the future. I personally believe we're in a crypto bubble but I don't believe this is the end. There will be another era of crypto spike, the question simply is where will you be when it comes?