I've always wondered this question, as it has never made sense to me. Why is profitability so much better on eth vs ubiq and ella, etc...

Eth consistently is about 10-20% more profitable to mine (as per whattomine).

zec/zen is almost always more profitable to mine than btcp/komodo

monero is almost always more profitable than ETN, etc.

Isn't mining the more profitable coin safer? or do people just constantly mine the less profitable coin and try to trade the volatility of it hoping to catch a swing? I get spec mining when you are mining a brand new coin and difficulty is non existent and value of a coin is completely unknown, but we're talking Ella and Komodo here.

you would think if most people just started mining the big coins only, the smaller coins would ultimately end start profiting within 5% of the big coins.