1．Listen to the basics of the language until it becomes automatic.
When I first started, I listened to the pronunciations of the pinyin and tones a million times, in the car, at home, when I had insomnia. Listen to it as many times as it takes until you know how every possible pinyin pronunciation.
2．Find good starter’s materials.
Some people have recommended Pimsueler (perhaps someone could recommend other starter’s material?) Be sure that the material focuses on listening and speaking. It would also be ideal if it focused on practical dialogues.
3．Learn the radicals.
Almost 90% of characters are composed of a radical along with a pronunciation component. The radical tells you something about the meaning of the character. The pronunciation part gives you a rough idea about how the word sounds.
In any case, there are a lot of radicals. You probably don’t need to memorize all of them at the start, but you’d memorize the 30 or 40 most important ones. You can spend a few hours practicing looking up unknown characters in the dictionary by identifying the radical. After a few months of practice looking up unknown characters, you’ll become good at knowing which part of a character is the radical and which part refers to pronunciation.
4．Visit free websites.
5．Label things in your apartment.
6．Enroll in a class or find a teacher.
Obviously, an experienced native speaker is an invaluable resource. Like others have said, it’s good to find a teacher that will honestly correct your pronunciation and give you encouragement.
7．Find good learning materials.
8. If you are in China, buy a small notebook to write down new stuff.
9. Buy music on DVD’s and CD’s.
10. Make flash cards.
On one side write the character, on the other the pinyin and English. Chinese words are usually comprised of two characters.