Right now its is difficult. Once BTC goes up investors would be looking to get into other profit areas and then it would be possible to make big gains on alts. Last year when BTC was above $1000, some of the alts went up by 20-30 times.
When BTC had hit $1200 - the early adopters from 2009 saw a return on investment of around 450,000. Meaning a $10 investment in 2009 netted them $4.5 million in late 2013. This was possible because BTC was initially fractions of a cent.
It's not a bad assumption to treat alternates like pokemon cards, buy several dozen good ones, and maybe waiting 6 to 10 years and lucking out on one or two of them (if it happens). Maybe you won't make millions but nobody would disagree over a free apartment or a nice car.
Besides alternates do bring a lot of people into Bitcoin. Doge brought in a lot of people into BTC, who were previously not users of Bitcoin, and many of them did not come from the traditional libertarian crowd of which most bitcoiners came from.
