ICO's aren't usually great for new people as there's not only choosing the ICO there's everything that comes after as well.

Stick to coins that people are talking about at least, if you did go into a new ICO then at least look at well regarded youtubers such as DataDash so you can get good understandings of what it is and what the general sentiment of the market is.

ICO's are a certain kind of game, where you can make money even if it's scam or even if it's a joke (eg. "Useless Ethereum Token") but you have to know what will usually happen. You can generally expect the following. Phase 1 will be a massive sell off when it hits an exchange. Phase 2 is it finds the bottom. Phase 3 is a pump, might be quite soon or need a little longer depending on the project. Pump usually goes parabolic then dumps, it may or may not go under the ICO price, which is why you try and get in at earliest stage if you can. If you're good you can sell in the dumping and buy again lower, but if you're new that is especially dangerous... I can't think of a coin that hasn't needed an initial pump and dump before it could then start growing. A coin like ICX is really pushing it and the last few days may be what forces it down finially, or maybe it's got a long way to go, who knows! :S

(ps. do try not to buy on that initial pump especially when it goes parabolic as Ive had that happen over and over and over and always it crashed down to at least half it's pumping price. This will be your greatest downfall and this whole psychological thing you will need to master. Until recently Bitcoin was defying gravity so I'm kind of glad it relieved me of that burden of thinking maybe it might keep going)

Point is you need some kind of plan so you don't get caught going up and down that very stressful roller coaster not knowing what to do. A great way to experience a rapid shift between mania and depression though, but I wouldn't recommend it. I suggest other than lots of paying attention to whats going on and what people say, you get in early for ICO's cheapest price and try and get a lot of coins/tokens and then decide ahead of time how much to sell off initially for some profits and for your money back so you don't regret anything and how much to hold. That way you can be happy with whatever happens. If you pick well, chances of 1 failing completely is unlikely but even if 2 did, 1 would pay for the others. It's mainly all about the plan and you knowing what you're going to do so that you rely as little as possible on what the chart ends up doing. If all goes well you take your (hopefully) at least several hundred % gains and repeat in more ICO's with more money, then do it again and again. All the time you're building up a bunch of pots of ICO's coins you're holding long term.

Since you're on steem, you're better off buying steem for now if you want a good place to invest your money. Then you can learn and do some ICO's when you're ready. I suggest when that happens you take like 3 ICO's and depending on how much you have you share 1/3 between all of them. Maybe if you're on the low end, a couple of hundred in each. Then do the system of selling a portion to get your money back, then holding a portion depending on whether you believe in the long term. I don't suggest buying indiscriminately and having lots of small amounts of coins, (other than any ICO' holdings because you got that from your ICO profits) and I say that as someone that does. This is because now you're going to feel crap about selling them if they then go up which they will, but you also won't have as much interest in them either as there's so many and you also don't have as much of a stake in it. Better to be targeted.

Bitconnect wasn't your typical blockchain project so you need to contextualise that experience, but on the other hand don't let peoples blind hate for Bitconnect make you think you can't experience the equivalent loss in many other ways in crypto if you're not careful. The difference is Bitconnect won't go back up again unless there's some miracle they pull out of hat and any fluctuations in price when it was still up you didn't need to think about which is not the normal cryptocurrency experience. Normally you have to deal with the rollercoaster ride of pump and dumps, like this past month which started off with 2 weeks of euphoria and then the next 2 weeks we went to hell. . If you're not careful with ICO's, they can also exit scam or they can just fail to finish, some other issue, or the project can get delayed for so long time it can seem like they might as well have.

If you're new, don't take big risks, you'll learn a lot but it will be expensive. Stick to the well regarded coins and conservatively watch what happens for a few months or be prepared to learn by pain. You can always learn a LOT from the mistakes though so always make sure you extract the most out of it if you do. In any case always pay attention to what's going on, even in things you weren't a part of so you can get used to whats going on, because there is a pattern but the mistake is always that you underestimated how much variation there is.

Maybe you could figure out a system, then post about it on Steem what you're doing and document the experience and how it went, how you felt about it, what you expected, what you didn't. etc. Then you could earn Steem for it at the same time :)