You are not doing it right if you aren't making good on your investment with mining.
In my experience if you pay attention and assess which is the most profitable coin to be mining on a daily or weekly basis you will adapt to the shifts in popularity and keep yourself in the green. If you need any tips, feel free to PM me with your issues.
My 2 cents,
Steelburn@Coincepts
You're basically arguing with my first assumption. While I agree that alt coins can be profitable early on (and I have made some quick bucks on FTC and CNC), I believe this to be a fad, with less interest in each new alt coin. Also, as more and more miners get clued in on this strategy, the difficulty rises so quickly that alt coins quickly decrease to 100% of BTC profitability. As I said, there are quick bursts of profit to be made with new alt coins, but things quickly revert to the mean. Even LTC has effectively been less profitable than BTC for awhile now, given additional power consumption and NMC bonus.
Currently, there is no alt coin consistently more profitable than BTC.