There's my big mistake, thank you. So from what I can tell, scrypt coins are listed on CoinWarz as much more profitable per hash than SHA-256 coins, but you can only do a fraction of a percent as many hashes. And there are no cheap, simple mining devices you can plug into your USB to mine scrypt coins super-efficiently.
So basically, mining alt-coins, both SHA-256 and scrypt, all come out about evenly with bitcoin in terms of profitability, which is to say not at all profitable.
Am I starting to get the picture more clearly now?