Obviously that is a disappointing result. Despite the drop in the value of BTC and the hit on earnings caused by the Verge attack, you should be earning more than that. Some people have questioned the timeliness of the estimates provided by Zergpool (both on this thread and on the pool's thread), so you may want to Use Actual Prices Instead of Estimates for that pool. Personally, I prefer using the MC Parameter rather than Auto-Switch ports on Zergpool (and BlockMasters) because the estimates are based on each coin's value and not the average for the entire port.
Yeah, I was using Zergpool's MC Parameter, but that's seem to matter too much. I think I'll just switch back to Blazepool and see how that goes.
Also, since BlazePool and Zergpool are similarly sized, most users tend to use one or the other. What can happen is that since both pools are popular, many miners will chase the most profitable coin on each pool. When you have both pools enabled, more often than not you will be switching between the ports that have the most miners - which means higher difficulty and lower shares in rewards. If you stick to either BlazePool or Zergpool and then add a smaller pool such as AHashPool, BlockMasters, HashRefinery or StarPool, you are better positioned to build bigger stakes in coins whose values are rising rather than smaller shares in coins whose values have peaked.
I did have Blazepool and Ahashpool enabled for a day and saw similar low profits. I've used Hashrefinery in the past, and I may switch to that as Ahashpool is actually almost as big as Blazepool at this point. If your theory about having a bigger and smaller pool is correct, then I will switch to something with less than 1000 miners, such as Hashrefinery.
I'm always looking at ways to help users improve their earnings. The latest release, 1.9.2 includes a new pool option to build bigger shares in coins that I would recommend using for either BlazePool or Zergpool. The situation is that some of the more popular algorithms (Neoscrypt, x16, Phi for example) on these pools have so many miners that if you just mine these ports when the prices are high, you usually end up with a really small share in the next block reward - fractions of a percent. While still profitable, you could be earning a little more by investing some more mining time in these coins. This new feature tells the software to delay switching work based on price when it estimates that your current stake in the next block for the current algorithm is very low. It can definitely help your earnings on bigger pools even if you may switch work a little less frequently.
Interesting. I've enabled this on Blazepool and will see if it makes a difference.