I think it's the same with everthing, sometimes you just have to loose money to learn sth. But it's always better to learn sth at first, and use others experience.
Nah, you shouldn't following other opinions because sometimes people just promoting their scam coins to help the dev collecting your money before dump their project. However, read and keep track your ICO are a way to make sure you do the right choice with following the trustworthy ICO.
What do you mean by saying "keep track your ICO"?
He means to keep up with their news and developments. Obviously follow their twitter and set a keyword alert in google so that you know right away when something's happening around their project. You'd also need to keep an eye on the news and see if any worthy competitors show up in the meanwhile.
Otherwise, a safe ICO in my opinion would be one that has a good smart contract, one that would return your money if the team fails to fulfill certain tasks on their roadmap. I would also pay close attention to their legal preparation, ICOs that don't pay much attention to their legal obligations may be exposed to high risk later on in their development which may eventually hurt your coin's price.
Some ICOs looked extremely successful at first too but then problems between the team members lead to a devaluation of the coin (Tezos). I would look closely at the arrangement the team has (if that info is available) with any partners and try to anticipate such problems as best as you can.
But all in all, the risk is always there, it's part of the very definition of investment.