It should be these,

• Is there a make sense of their Road Map and White paper.
• Transperancy of their team and the ownership.
• The real use of the project.
• Price and coins circulations
• It should have all social media presence.
• The last one is, listing in a big exchange was a good sign

My suggestion is, don't put all your eggs in one basket, as much as you invest of what you can afford.
Or rather than sticking to the proven and tested projects that have their own developer and working its own blockchain, not on the forked one.
Just DYOR.