The Story on How to Continue Working After you Can’t Work Anymore

True story? You judge for yourself.

Every evening, my grandfather would come home from work, feet hurting after a long day of selling vacuum cleaners from door to door. Then, it was microwaves. Before he retired for good, he sold book clubs to housewives. My grandfather was a natural salesman, and when he was forced to retire because of his bad knees, he asked me if there was any other avenue that he could take to selling various objects, doodads, and paraphernalia to general America from the comfort of his own house. The internet was just starting, but even then, there were sites set up for selling. eBay was, as it is now, the biggest. I then showed him a smaller, up and coming website called www.craigslist.com. I also showed him how to work from home online, and all the job possibilities that awaited him.

Yet, being a natural salesman, and years upon years of experience helped him to establish a very lucrative business online. He sold all sorts of things, starting with books on a small site called amazon.com. From there, when eBay opened its doors to the possibilities of electronics, he sold toasters on eBay. At the end of his days, he decided that it was time to pen his memoirs, and paid someone to convert the word files to a new format, called PDF. He never became popular. He never made thousands of dollars, but his new business online made him happy. It gave him a reason to get up every morning, and over his cup of tea, see what was selling that day.

He tried his hand at stocks and bonds, but the liquid market online seemed too young, unexplored, and dangerous. He only ever wanted to invest in something that he could believe in. He also asked for help trying to set up a Mr. Fixit website, but my limited knowledge on the subject caused that project to fall by the wayside. Still, he pressed on into newer and bigger things, such as blogger and the brand new Friendster networking site to sell even more things globally, without having to pay a fee. When he died,  he left behind a great legacy of selling things online. Hundreds of thousands of emails came into his one little inbox of people saying that they would miss him, and miss his way of selling. All of this came about because my grandfather worked from home online.