Electrum RPC not working

[John Tate]

I am trying to get the JSON RPC interface working on Electrum, but it isn't listening on the port.

I tried:
$ electrum setconfig rpcport 7777
$ electrum daemon start

However there is no process listening on the RPC port.

I was told this is what I need to do here: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/merchant.html