Faucets are a waste of time. Do you have any skills to offer maybe?
First, I'd suggest you to start with some cheaper alt-coins to see how it goes, before you jump in with some bigger invstments. Also, you might want to follow John McAfee on twitter, he has like "coin of the week" posts and that coin usually spikes in price in the next few days.
Lurk around, nothing much to tell you tbh.
do u know what the minimum deposit is? also what kind of fees do they have on trades?
Depends on the service and you can find it all on their website, never used coinbase tho.