I'd like to be your conversation partner. My Spanish is Colombian. PM me for contact details.

If you are willing/able, the best way is to go to a Spanish school in Mexico or Central America and live with a host family for a month or two. I learned more in two months doing that than my first four university classes combined. This probably doesn't fall under "teaching yourself," but if you are serious the other things can't even touch the ROI of an immersive experience, in terms of time and money to Spanish acquired Fluenz is a great computer-based program, but it's expensive. I used Rosetta Stone a bit, this is way better. Pimsular audio tapes for car rides or MP3 player Duolingo is free, but isn't for active conversation. Look on Meetup.com for a spanish conversation meetup. italki is a good option for a conversation focus. http://markmanson.net/foreign-language http://www.andrewskotzko.com/how-to-unlock-foreign-languages/ The last two links are about principles/suggestions. I agree with most of them. This is my advice: say anything that you can, whenever you can. Embarrassment is often the biggest obstacle. When you are beginning with conversations, say anything you can, even if it is a single word, grammatically incorrect, or irrelevant. With regard to what niceguyanon said about low ROI on languages aside from English, I think there are social capital benefits, self-confidence benefits, cognitive functioning benefits that are valuable. Not to mention travel benefits--Spanish makes travel in many countries easy.