I donno.
Maybe you misunderstood the task.
Maybe it was 'wait for user input then check to see the number of agruments', rather then check the actual user input you were waiting on.
Anyways, I think the trouble with your script there is that your using the string input rather then the variable input.
Try
for thing in $input
Also I think it's ((count++)) for doing that sort of thing, but I am not sure. don't do math in bash very much.
edit:
oh, and no spaces in the variable assignment.
count=0
not
count = 0