First of all stay away from ICO's. Only experienced investors should consider those. ICO's are mostly overpriced, and have little or no guarantee of delivering what they promise. Second, there is a massive shortage of good crypto-devs. The good ones are mostly already working in other projects, so it's really hard to find good devs for a new coin or token. Third, the "experts" that are available to you in forums and social media are mostly accepting payment to shill a coin so noobs like you go and buy it. So until you have gained sufficient knowledge yourself or by chance get access to one of the private channels where real experts discuss, you are easy prey for the sharks.

We are now in a bear market. That means a lot of very good and established coins are cheap. They are a lot easier to research than ICO's. With established coins also noobs can do proper research along the lines that several people in this thread have suggested.