I think monthly investment is good for long term, you diversify (dunno if that's good word to use) risk of losing big in price changes when you keep buying all the time so you whole position is not bought with one same price. Also if willing to invest for saving and gain capital, it's good do every month instead of "when i remember" it's really fast habit that every payday when you pay bills, you buy some stock which i guess can be quite easily automated as well but especially in beginning it can be nice do it manually to get used to platform, analyze how your portfolio is doing etc...
Investing stocks is usually long term project (except these Reddit peeps who daytrade their all savings in options but that's gambling, not investing) but it's nice to see when capital is growing and compounding quite nicely after certain time.
Process itself is really simple, biggest thing probably is decide where you wanna put your money, often it's recommended to split it for few different assets/companies that your all eggs are not in one basket, wouldn't pick too many, you don't wanna end up to buy 50 stocks with £1 every month
. When you know what you want, then it shouldn't be much more complicated these days than deposit and chose which slot you play, there are huge amount of different platforms for different type of users, i would say you are looking something with very low fees, you don't wanna pay £20 from your £50 as comission, checked quicky capital dot com you mentioned, that looks mostly trading platform where you loads of bying and selling, they don't take commission (it's priced somewhere in product prices or what ever, we know that nobody do things for free but at least no really big expenses in that one). I would probably chose some platform where are more products available, including bonds and other boring saving stuff but sometimes there are always moments when you want have your funds just safe, having loads of different instruments from bonds to stocks and etf:s is always good that you have loads to choose and can esily move your funds from investment to other in same platform. I have no idea what would be best, little bit google and comparing fees and what everything they have usually is enough, that's not gonna make huge difference as long fees don't eat too much from your monthly amount. I know many who have started and still use CC Trader, it's probably very common platform, you have access to many different country stock exchanges and loads of other things which should be enough, you of course chose place where you find what you are interested and preferably more, as said, during years there are different shit storms when you might temporarily just have your funds safe when ie. stocks are all diving big time.
You're planning to start long term project so you probably wanna chose something you believe is doing good in long term, i often end up to buy huge companies, just due to reason that i can't see them easily collapse (like Coca Cola as example), these usually are quite low risk, low reward type conservative stocks, then also can think which industry you think will blow in next 10-20 years and find company or ETF for that industry (cannabis companies can be used example in this category, these prices have already raised as people do buy them as they believe it's gonna get bigger and bigger industry), you might pick some smaller not yet huge company but what you believe have valid chance to do well in competition and at least stay alive or get acquired by some big competitor which means nice payday for owners and there are endless number of other ways how people decide their investment and splitting it at least to few places makes it already much less risky.
Just try all the time know what and why you are doing something and stick in your strategy (of course can tweak it better and portfolios naturally develope when they grow), if you decide to save £50/month long term, stick in that and don't listen these Reddit WSB peeps who wanna get rich in hour, if you wanna save and invest old boring way, you mostly just make your monthly buys and not much more, you believe what you started to buy and most of the times when sticking in this you gain nice money but it just happens slowly and many says boring but it just works. Don't know many people who wouldn't save quite nice amount if they just have done their monthly investment and sticking in that and let capital keep compounding for you. Where you put your money you can set your risk appetite, you can have part in some really secure companies, ETF or what ever you chose and part to some smaller companies which you believe have chance to rocket, these of course are not really easy to find and actually know how they do for long period but that's maybe why put everything to some startups but just little bit to some speculative things where you might lose but also hit progressive jackpot, these kind of stocks have much bigger volatility, opposite for many big traditional ones.
I would say that most difficult thing is to get started, i know many people who still after years are still planning to start soon
Best time of course was long time ago, second time is always soon as possible, ie. next payday. There been these Reddit stocks now lately but market in general is not affected by these, of course now everything have gone up for long time and many have wait downswing 5 years now, there are always some corrections up and down coming but if you going to save/invest next 30-50 years or what ever, you'll see ups and downs, good dip would be nice now, just getting more with same money and until this moment these downs always been turning ups sooner or later what ever have happened so just being calm and keep making monthly buys you get over these, that's one nice point in investing little bit every month, you should never be forced to sell in bad price when you don't have any loans or any type of leverage but only savings which nobody force you to cashout.
Huups, long post with probably most horrible written text in this world... sorry, but guess these few points tried to make, can be found
As we re in CM, one interesting industry is gaming of course, many of big casinos are listed in stock exchange, mostly Sweden and Norway, i like to own some of these, have got these for some different reasons and living in Malta keeps me quite near what's happening in industry so for me one quite natural pick as can try to figure out who's doing good and who's not. Now when checking, it was good idea to buy some GIG when they were doing really bad, had to sell all their casino brands etc... but also whole company was restructured to only B2B with significally lower costs and CEO+board people i thought could make operations run again and what matters, make it profitable, both them with 4-5 nok price and today seem to be over 13, it was just so cheap that thought it's gonna bounce back up little bit (not to over 60 it once was) or with that price, soon some big competitor buy whole thing away if there is even one asset they want, dunno which was better but now it looks much more stable when reading their reports. Probably gonna get rid of part of my GIG:s to take little profit and leave rest to see what happens.