1) Referring an ICO Rating SiteYou can refer to ICO rating websites as it is the most straightforward and easy way. These websites (Please refer to annex 1) rate the upcoming ICOs. But it may not 100% accurate, even the most experienced people do mistakes as well these sites too. And also many of these sites charge a fee to publish an ICO in there site. Money can slightly change the rating of a particular project.
My Experience #3 :I participated in a bounty campaign called
RootBlock Chain (Bounty Thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3016577.0-root)
for 9 weeks there were no ratings about the project in recognized ICO rating sites. As days go by I was the second largest stakes holder in the bounty campaign according to the bounty spreadsheet. And guess what, they cancelled the bounty program day before yesterday (16/062018)! They announce that they are going to refund the investors and for bounty hunters, they get nothing but the total disappointment and agony!
The same happened to me with Root BlockChain, I looked for them in ICObench and they gave a 4.2 rating and in ICOmarks 8.9, the whitepaper and the team seemed good but at the end the result was the worst.
As for the ICO Rating Site I found this post
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4474691.0 and stop believing in all these sites.
At the end all this seems like a simple lottery where only luck can pay us for our time and effort.