gregbo - 9:56 pm on Oct 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

I guess I just had a bad experience with the first person I hired as a full time in-house employee.

I can't blame you for not wanting to hire people who just use your time and resources to start their own businesses, but ...

The only way for them to put 2 and 2 together and figure out my "secrets" would be to poke and prod for the information, essentially they would have to be spying on the business and that's why I would want to discontinue using their services.

Given the literature that's available on AdSense, eventually they'll figure out how to start their own sites, and will do so if they want to. So you should at least be prepared for the possibility that they'll quit if they're not paid more.