I generally find Aeon more profitable to mine, though it depends somewhat on the hardware. If you want to invest in Monero long-term, then better buy it directly.

Monero is currently favoured in botnets, as it's a fairly mainstream coin where CPU mining remains viable. Botnet operators don't have to worry about electric bills, so exact profitability is not an issue, but it drives the network difficulty needlessly higher.

As a hobbyist, I prefer dealing with lesser known emerging coins. Besides other interesting possibilities, it is easier to gather a significant chunk of the coin, which may turn out very profitable in the future. This is also quite a practical issue for mining; with the high difficulty of Monero, it takes a while to accumulate the minimum payout of typical pools.