link to previous article on how to find ICOs for investment - https://steemit.com/steemit/@cryptobanyan/ico-investment-series-3-how-to-find-an-ico-for-investment
Each topic that I touch upon can be very detailed and complex. Where possible I give links that help give deeper details. I refrain from any deep discussions because of 2 simple reasons - 1. I am not authority on these topics, but more importantly 2. I want to cover a broader perspective of ICO investments and any deep discussion will take us away from our goal.

Registering for ICOs

Unless you register for ICOs, get whitelisted and in many cases complete KYC, you can't participate in their sale. So all your research is useless if the ICO does not even allow you to participate and make your investment (buy the ICO coins / tokens).

Each ICO may have a different process for registration. I outline the steps I have followed in most of them and should make a sum of them all and therefore you may follow some or all of these steps.

• Get on the website of your ICO of interest. Please take the link from ICO website or best from google search. Cross check the link you clicked multiple times.

  • I normally do a whois on the domain, to find who registered it, just to be sure.

  • There are a lot of phishing scams going on in ICO world and don't be surprised if you ended up clicking on a phishing link and ended up transferring your precious cryptocurrency to a fraudster. Not taking precaution will hurt you financially and even other ways in case you submit all your personal data. Be extremely careful on checking the link you click (and I can't stress hard enough on this seemingly very easy step but fraught with phishing dangers).

• Immediate next steps

  • Signup for newsletter on the website. This will ensure you get timely communication (at least most of them do a honest job of keeping their subscribers intimated about ICO progress).

  • Sign-up to the website if it provides you with an option.

  • Look for their social media links and join them. For many ICOs this is must for participation (more on this in my next article in this series).

  • Follow ICO communication keenly on the ICOs social media channels and websites.

Most ICOs would need you to do the following:

Whitelist

Many of the following steps may be required

• Enter your email address
• Enter your cryptocurrency wallet public address. This must be your own wallet (hardware or software) and not an exchange wallet (exchange wallets on binance, bittrex, coinbase etc.). Examples of acceptable wallets are MyEtherWallet, Ledger Nano S, MetaMask, NEON Wallet, Stargazer (Mobius Network did their ICO on Stellar Lumens blockchain) and such.
• Your name
• How you heard about the ICO
• How you can contribute to ICO other than investing cryptocurrency or fiat into it.
• How much cryptocurrency or fiat you like to invest - I would advice that you not be frugal in answering this. Incase you change your mind and would like to invest more and the ICO has too many interested participants then ICOs don't normally allow you to change this. Often the amount you state here is not binding (check with your ICO on their Telegram or other channel if it is binding) and in case you lose interest and would like to reduce the amount, then you will be able to do it (again depends on ICO policy, so check with ICO admins on their social media channels).
• Lastly you will be expected to click some I agree checkboxes on their policies and regulations.

They may immediately confirm that you are whitelisted or put you in waitlist and confirm after a few days or weeks.

Whitelist window is very very small, so plan to be among the first to register.

Some ICOs had infamously allowed only first N numbers to get through. The process was wild after whitelist opening and the rush mostly made the website extremely slow and unusable. Lately ICOs are shying away from this process as it is giving them a lot of negative press and also some high net worth investors are moving away and those getting whitelisted are not investing enough to close the crowdsale. There are no guarantees, so the earlier you whitelist the better.

Lately ICOs are asking questions from their white paper to ensure that you have actually read it and are truly interested and not just registering for the sake of it. This makes my plan of register first and read later rather difficult. If the ICO is very very interesting, then I do read the white paper in detail first.

KYC

KYC stands for know your customer. Many of the following would be required and it is better to be prepared

• Confirmation of your email and other details entered during whitelist or maybe reenter all of that
• Country of citizenship
• Country of residence
• Gender
• If you are an accredited investor by the laws of your country of residence.
• Address of residence
• Date of birth
• Your photograph (passport size or check their specifications on this).
• The following documents
  • Proof of ID (passport, driving licence)
  • Proof of residence (utility bill, credit card statement, bank statement, some other official document)
  • A selfie with the Photo ID (and possibly the selfie should show a note stating the ICO name and current date)
• Some even need your digital signature
• Some need you to download legal documents, sign and upload them back (bitcoinsuisse comes to mind for such process all the time - I am not a fan of such tedious process, but if ICO is complying with SEC rules, then this I understand becomes a must, since you are not just buying any token, but a security token).
• Finally some checkboxes for agreeing to their regulations, terms and conditions and policies.

For the ICOs I have participated in the KYC approval process has taken anywhere from a week to 4 weeks. Now you may understand why I recommend register first and then do deep dive into the ICO to evaluate its merit in detail to confirm an investing strategy for it.

If you have managed to whitelist, then KYC is a more relaxed process for most ICOs I participated in. But do note that even KYC has a window within which you must complete it.*

Important Note - A lot of new ICOs are doing away with whitelisting process or introducing newer processes, so please check all this information with the ICO administrators on their social media channel or by writing an email to the ICO.

Disclaimer - I am only sharing my limited knowledge and for the sake of knowledge alone. This is in no way an investment advice or legal or taxation counsel. I am not qualified to provide any of these. This is also not a recommendation or encouragement to invest in cryptocurrencies or ICOs