Mining Earthcoins for the last 24hours. How to pick a mining pool?

Hi Everyone,

I have been reading this forum for a couple of months now and I am very interested and excited about the prospects of bitcoin and other alt coins. This forum has been great for getting me up to speed very quickly. Very thankful for having this resource available. My goal is to one day have my own exchange in the middle east.

Last month, I started mining LTC with my AMD gpu but the payout was very small so I stopped. Yesterday, I saw the announcement for EarthCoin and decided to join the mining adventure again. I am very happy to see that my wallet is starting to grow with a good number of earthcoins, something I've never been able to get with BTC or LTC.

My question is regarding mining pools. People on this forum seem to be good at comparing mining pools and picking the one best for mining. They look at the pool statistics and quickly discern the quality of the pool. It would be great of someone can help explain how I can go about analyzing the different pools form a performance point of view and how to pick one over the other (other than fees).

Regards,
burj