Two very useful web sites for the English learner (though many of these have other language resources as well):
Simplified Traditional (Mandarin Chinese)
If you read these thoroughly, you will see that these link to lots of other useful sites.
Starting out, I recommend writing the 1st 100 or so characters, or the first ten or so lessons, if you have a book. I find that writing all the time is too stressful on my wrists, which I have to use for computing work. Instead, write the characters in your head, and get 80% of the benefit. Follow the stroke order at first to get the general idea.
I recommend an electronic dictionary with multiple grapheme/component/radical lookup, e.g. gwaei on Linux, and NOT stroke count/order, like the ones you typically find in a printed dictionary. Even single radical lookup, as you typically find in books, is no good. Trying to remember “official” radicals, or how many strokes are in a character, is a poor use of time until you have a decent level of literacy, and even then, in my opinion it is a pretty marginal skill, since there are more powerful ways to look things up, and since typing is a large portion of your writing time in real life. I recommend periodically returning to lists of the components (often a foreword in a book, or simply lookup in your electronic dictionary) from time to time, in order to build your “spelling” and mnemonic ability. I don’t quite believe in the Remembering the Kanji approach of meaning and no speaking, as you will eventually need to know how something is read/said/combined. However, the technique of coming up with “stories” or “explanations” out of the components that you see in those types of books is absolutely critical in learning characters without grinding workbooks.
The other thing that I got turned onto recently is a “screen reader”, which gives you the readings, a large view of the character, and the possible meanings for any character you highlight in your web browser. For Chinese, one is MDBG Reader; for Japanese, one is Rikaichan (a Firefox plugin – there is a Chrome version floating on the Internet as well). These aren’t something you really want to rely upon early in learning, because reading is still painfully slow if you have to translate even 1/5th of the words. However, they are very helpful once you have some reading ability and want to break through the different headings in a web page to find what you want. These are also very helpful for refreshing your memory if you don’t remember a reading or a meaning.
The most important thing is to find something that you actually want to read. For me, it is most any military, history, culture, or travel website relating to these countries, also video games. If you don’t have something you want to read, and it is “purely business”, you should stop right there, cowboy. These languages are a huge time investment, and therefore a huge opportunity cost, which can only be justified if you have multiple ways to get something out of it. This is particularly true if you know English, because many people in East Asia prefer English in conversation with a Westerner. I would never recommend learning a foreign language for the sake of it. I can read a fair amount of French, but I almost never use that skill because I don’t interact with folks from Francophone countries in French.
Another big tip is to study characters while on an exercise bike, elliptical machine, etc. If you spend lots and lots of time learning characters that you could spend on other activities, particularly time which could be used on career growth, civic duties, and relationship with friends/family, you’re going to resent the opportunity cost and therefore stop studying. Get a book like the Spahn and Hadamitzky Kanji & Kana, where it isn’t big and can be laid flat while you’re sweating, or your smartphone, whatever, and write the characters in your head, say them out loud, etc. Personally, I find it too hard to read most other texts while exercising, because I’m a fast reader and tend to skip over parts I find unimportant, and because things I read tend to have lots of details and things I need to think about, which is really hard to do when working out. Brute force memorization with low amounts of physical reading and page turning is about as much as I can practically do, so studying characters in the gym works great.