For normal trading you can do bitcoin trading but you can do altcoin trading but in that you should do full research and then enter, margin trading is high risk but at the same time it will also give high profit also. So everything is upto you to decide which way you want to go.
I think that with small budget, you can make small money by investing and day trading the coins available in the market at low cost. ETH, Ripple and Altcoin can do it for you.
However, ICO would have been another great option but since we have had some scams lately, not everyone would prefer to go for a good ICO and by the way finding one with great potential and a nice project is not that easy as well.
This is simple logic, small thing yields low profits and vice versa.
If someone have got less capital but intentions are to make it beneficial, then with right implementations of techniques and best practices of trading, good margin can be obtained. And yes, as you have said about ETH and ripple, these altcoins are giving good ratios for even low capital. Just need to be focused and patient in your dealing while trading.