Yeah there's so much information to swim through nowadays, and so much work behind finding the right ICO. It's a bit overwhelming for someone who hasn't done much work with crypto to try and distinguish one from the other. Thanks for the list of pointers, that is certainly good advice.
I don't know if it would be better to hire someone to do this for you or not. It might help to work with an advisor at the beginning just to see how they do it, and then start out for yourself, but starting small.
There is always a possibility that a successfully looking project would collapse right in the middle, so everyone's advice here is just "Invest on what you can afford to lose", You are right start small. Also no advice is perfect, the best teacher is always experience. Also there are some review sites like icobench and menlo.one that can help you where to start investing your money.