I'd say if you're mining $38 a day in ZCL vs $15 a day in ETH then mining ZCL and converting into ETH will make you more ETH per day than straight mining it even taking in the fee's. So that's the strategy I'd go with it too.
Not that I'm an expert on this, and I don't even play one on the internet, my strategy is I'm mining ETH (the difference on my rig is not enough to make up for fee's) directly, plus dual mining DCR to Nicehash which then gets converted directly to BTC. I can then transfer the BTC free to coinbase and either sell (through GDAX) enough to pay for operating expenses or maybe sell it to convert to ETH or LTC. I'm probably not going to hold BTC (but we'll see) because I personally think there are better crypto's for the long term (due to the technical issues with BTC and the network). Right now I also have an old R9 280x mining to either NiceHash (to convert to BTC) or Mining pool hub (to convert to LTC) depending on what is most profitable for it at the time as it only has a few algo's it can mine profitably.