I'll bet he never made what he would of leaving the sites on auto pilot for 4 years.
Of course this is a route for people who need fast cash. Only good for those like us who didn't and still don't. Which is strange for someone who was broke in 2004.
*************
Each site has different needs and ways it's run. Some like a Tube or advert related site might just need minimal work, some like like a paysite might need more work. Obviously this idea does not work for sites that still need a lot of investment to keep running. No more fresh content, or very little and just non exclusive. No major redesign or programming updates. Just the normal day to day running of a site that's already on the back burner. so the trust element is reduced to very low, the "worker" would not need access to servers or very limited.
I can only judge this from my experience and in the last four years we have done very little to
www.paulmarkhamteens.com and
www.astral-blue.com. I have some content I need to edit and put on Astral Blue, but in honesty can't be bothered. It would need very little "trust" for some one to do some work on keeping the sites running and up to date. And I think this applies to a lot of sites that are not surging forward or the owner is working on to keep it bringing in money.
Also as the content owner on a lot of paysites, I know what some of the offers are worth and the moment they discover the site doesn't include the content. The truth comes out, the sites are being sold for less the content is worth.