I am, by no means, intending to make a career out of day-trading or expect to make boatloads of money off of daytrading as I only plan to invest around 500 to 700 dollars initially into this potential "hobby".
Then stop. That money would be more useful elsewhere in your life.
However, along with some modest HODLs in bigger currencies, I think it'd be fun to experiment with day-trading spending only a few hours to research/trade coins. Especially in the bearish market today, the opportunity to trade smaller coins and engage with the community through a new facet seems like a good idea.
Yes, it would "seem like a good idea" until you lose that money which would have been more useful elsewhere.
With the amount I am willing to invest I truly wonder whether my time might be better spent engaging in physical activity or extra work hours.
That would be better, yes.
I am in for the long-haul with my main investments and don't plan on messing with them too much but am not totally opposed to trading some of it in order to bolster my investment into day-trading. To begin I've thought about simply trading ETH tokens for simplicity in storing them on one address on MEW and transferring to exchanges. I welcome any and all advice anyone else may have even if some of it has been repeated by the few articles and threads I've read. If anyone has any particularly good resources/guides that they found extremely helpful as they started out daytrading I would be extremely grateful if you posted them.
You don't sound like someone rich. Save that $700, work your ass off, and keep storing a part of your monthly salary in Bitcoins.