Elements Side-Hustle In Retirement

Elements
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Lengthy post. Sorry! Here’s my question in the first paragraph… then some background. I’m seeking advice from other mature or older Elelments developers. Do you feel the Elements store is actually going to open for 3rd parties before the end of 2026, and if so, will Realmac have already cornered the market on the meat and potatoes of all components and addons that might be the "generally expected” early purchases for the platform? Will this limit or hobble marketability for 3rd parties?

I ask this because, I’m wondering if there’s actually going to be a viable 3rd party developer path for components, or if the best direction for new developers will be more towards vertical market solutions… in the form of “projects with workflows” instead of just components. Please give me some opinions. Now for my background…

As a recently retired musician, but who also had a Lotus Notes consultancy back in the day (before my music career) I had a fair amount of advanced development experience with early tools and languages (Cobol, Fortran, Basic, DBase, MSAccess, Clarion, & Lotus Notes). I had some major clients like NuSkin, The Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee, P3 Electronic Health Systems, Ovid Technologies and Fairchild Semiconductor. I owned and ran a one person consultancy. Since my music career began (back at age 42), I haven’t developed anything other than my own music websites and a couple music websites for other musician friends. That’s my past.

Fast forward to today. Now I’m on a fixed income (translating to comparative low-income), and am looking for a possible side hustle back into a field I think I might have some chances at success in. I REALLY see the advantages of Elements over RW Classic. I spent hundreds of dollars on addons for Classic. I now see that from Realmac Software alone, there’s over $700 of addons available on the Elements store… but no 3rd party entries yet.

Right now I just have a Plus license that I’m considering upgrading to a Pro license so I can legally create and sell some work. I no longer want to dabble, but to dive in. All comments and advice are appreciated.

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Sure :+1: why not? Creativity and cleverness rule the day…

If you can make something that doesn’t exist - or does things in a simpler manner - it has a good chance of being successful…

Doobox- might have the simple add ons covered when the store fully opens…

Watch what he creates…

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Thanks Michael. I’ll check out Doobox. I’m also trying to get my head around so many other related tools and sites… like Git, API docs, etc… Lot’s to catch up on!

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@Doobox

He’ll have the $5.99 to $9.95 add ons covered :slight_smile:

Very creative little fun things - you think :thinking: yeah why not spend $6.95 for this and that…

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I’ll quote myself from this post.

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Not sure what you’re referring to. I’m not complaining about the cost of components on the store. I’m seeking commentary about possible development directions from the general pulse of current developers… that might be more marketable directions than component building. I know it costs money to purchase tools, and I think I’m encouraged by what Realmac is charging for components. That does tend to infer that 3rd parties will be able to be profitable, once the store opens up to us.

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I suspect it boils down to two things:

  1. How creative you are in finding gaps, time savers, or large scale components (e.g. CMS) and getting them out quickly.
  2. How much money you’re really seeking.

We’ve watched the Rapidweaver/Stacks developer market for awhile. A lot of talented folk came and went, which tells me that it wasn’t sustainable. Elements currently has far fewer users, and it’s unclear how sustainable it will be for developers given that the enabler for that is still in the future.

The elephant in the room here is AI, unfortunately. Bootstrap Studio just got an AI agent that seems to work decently, and it solves problems that developers typically would step in to solve.

Especially with my experience with the Little Book of CMS, I’d say that the “opportunity” with Elements isn’t developing new Components, but rather in documenting, step-by-step, and training. As I’ve written before, Elements is a bit like Photoshop: a huge number of tools already sit within it, there are multiple ways to do something, but getting from site idea to site currently requires a lot of self-training. And/or experimentation and discovery.

The thing all of us creating sites want most is “time saving.” We still want to design, we still want to populate, but when we have an idea we want to know how to accomplish it as quickly as possible. You see that here in the forum all the time with people asking “how do I…”, despite the fact that Realmac has provided a fair amount of documentation.

Just as Photoshop is surrounded by a large contingent of developers (e.g. plug-ins, panels, etc.) and training (e.g. KelbyOne, et.al.), for Elements to succeed it’s going to need the same things. However, the risk on the developer side is Sherlocking (yes, Adobe does that, too). The risk on the training/education side is lower, particularly since Realmac, like most software companies, sees that as a cost, not a profit center.

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Really good answer…

I am guilty of the how do I….

I like little too - doobox audio player and fireflies worked perfectly with my Sci Fi websites…

So for me it’s both…

Although I read manuals - I find - for my learning style I remember it and - get it quicker - through video…

Once I see it done - I’m Golden :slight_smile:

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I suspect this was part of the downfall of the Stack developers. Once Rapidweaver users had the Stacks they needed, what would they buy next? There was a little additional Stack-buying flurry with foundations and CMS’s, but that, too dried up rapidly. Moreover, some of it is enormously complex. Total CMS, for example, does everything you’d want, but even its provider has discovered they needed to provide a lot more training to get more folk to use it.

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Roy as a near 70 year old, I started a side hustle - medical not websites - that over took my professional career so I retired early and spent my time building a business. I set up an e-commerce site with YourHead Blocks, converted it to RW5 and now Elements.

It’s hard time to start a business in a creative field at the moment and AI is a worrying proposition. With old age comes wisdom, but now a days equals the advance of AI too.

I always say before starting have a clear business plan and a firm financial plan to go with it from your post I would say you have a music background and experience to do websites, so why not offer a service doing Music websites, and charge everyone including friends.

If you find a niche or something thats missing in the music web scene develop that and add value to your sites. Perhaps where you live there are some new start up bands that might need a website for promotion so offer to do them one and promote your skills helping local talent.

I don’t envy you but good luck!

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I have one ‘client’ I do her website - she does my taxes

Perhaps contact local businesses in your area? See if they would like a website?

Just a thought…

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To Thom, Paul and Michael,

Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I’m really liking Elements as a tool for building. My first visions for it were to participate in the Marketplace with interesting or quirky Components, but the more I see the depth of the full feature set… and that we’re still pre-release/beta with so many features (a good thing)… I’m just doubting if my own dev skills and savvy would be a profitable venture in the new “Component” world. I must say that Realmac is kicking butt with the depth of this tool. I just don’t see anything else out there being more valuable.

As mentioned though, being a “mere” website developer (and I don’t say that lightly) seems like it might offer the best fit for me. That’s why I mentioned vertical solutions and maybe creating purposeful projects with workflows being an option. My experience with musicians and creatives is that there’s a huge and very wide base of weekend warriors and occasional players that don’t have money to spend even a few hundred dollars on a website. So, I’d likely need to focus on the next higher tier of singer/songwriters and fledgling touring artists/groups to be profitable. We’ll see I guess!

Elements does offer such an opportunity for templating pages or whole sites, and then just selecting appropriate features from my own pre-developed storehouse and plugging in a clients information. So, I’m seeing that the easiest path might end up being the most valid. Perhaps I’ll be better served delving deeper into UI/UX design and less into purely code related directions. I’m a very vibrant 67, so I’m not “done”. This conversation has been a good one. Thanks again!

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