37signlas—creators of the book for soft­ware design­ers—have given us a round-up of how they built a devoted audience/client-base.

From the begin­ning, we allot­ted plenty of time for side projects. Things that would get us atten­tion, exper­i­ments with new ways of sell­ing our ser­vices, ways to show off our design think­ing, etc.

Here are a few of the key non-client projects that enabled us to build up an audience: