The common valuation for most ICO's is right around 5 million softcap and 15 hardcap. Most ICO's these days rarely get above a consistent 50k+ volume daily, unless the team has some sort of experience backing them, let's face it, most have no clue on how to maintain and grow a crypto.
The best thing to do as a trader/investor, is sit and wait till the coin hits the markets. More often than not, you'll be able to snag some discounted tokens/coins. There are rare cases (mostly with the tokens coming out of asia atm), that they outperform their ICO prices. But, the days of making returns on ANY ICO investment is long gone, especially in this bear market and within the foreseeable future.
The good ICO's that are highly profitable, you are very likely to miss, due to mass garbage/spam. There's nothing you really can do about this, unless you spend hours researching per day (full-time job), or just are pretty lucky.
Edit: If you spend all your time researching ICO's, you're potentially missing out on solid coins already in existence, that could yield even greater profits, for an already proven and accepted concept. This is my best advice, i give to all newcomers who approach me on an occasional basis.
Added bonus, you don't have to deal with KYC nonsense (for your security btw) and all the ridiculous efforts you have to go through, just to invest into a decentralized coin.
This post will discuss the main keys to pay focus on when evaluating an ICO investment.
* Important warning before we start: ICOs are a high-risk way of fundraising. Never invest anything you cant completely afford to lose. Keep in mind that due to a lack of regulation, you will have difficulty getting back your lost money in case of any failures.
1 Team Composition
2 Bitcointalk.org Thread
3 Stage of the project and VC investments
4 Community and Media
5 What do they need the token for? Is the blockchain necessary?
6 Unlimited / Hard cap
7 Token distribution when and how
8 Evaluating the Whitepaper
9 Quality of the code Meet Github
10 The Bottom Line