I would suggest to focus on the alphabet. Learn the alphabet without romanization of the letters. No matter how painful, boring and frustrating it will be in the beginning, get used to this alphabet. Take private sessions with tutors or find language partners that will skype with you in order to help you with reading, the pronunciation is important. Russian is tricky when it comes to pronunciation, you never know when to stress the words, sometimes O will be pronounced as A and sometimes will be as O and there's no logic in it. Sometimes you will say " to pee " when you mean " to write ". 

Learn step by step. I suggest you to watch the series of " Russian world " 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52bRYf198XY&list=PLB306DSmXL1aXdzgIt2mJkm4YfNqsOv-r

This professor is simply excellent, she teaches Russians as if we were dumb, stupid, retard babies which is exactly what I needed because Russian is !@#$$%¨& difficult. 

But if you don't struggle that much in the beginning of your learning process of Russian, then I'd suggest you to start studying with RussianPod101 or with books and online resources that you might find wandering around! 

Good luck and I really mean it! 

Starting from scratch is always a big challenge and demands a lot of effort.

The first steps are the most difficult, but after a few months you will be delighted with your improvement.

The " Russian world " series on Youtube is really good - the advice given by Murillo Costa could not be any better. But I would add two points:

- Learn Russian by Pimsleur: 90 lessons divided in 3 levels. Listen and repeat. Great way to start. In a few months you will be surprised how many words you will be able to recognize and repeat correctly.

- Twitter: Follow russian twitter accounts. You will get everyday a good amount of text. On twitter you can easily translate pushing one button. It is an excellent exercise: read; try to understand; translate and see the meaning. Doing it everyday can help you to increase a lot your vocabulary.

Everything depends on your goals. If you want to train your brain - 30 minutes is OK, if you need to know simple phrases and to be able to find direction, it is ok. But if you are going to read Dostoevsky in original or achieve the level Upper Intermediate+, it is better to have lessons twice a week / 80 minutes and do homework between lessons (15 minutes a day or so). Because 30 minutes it is not enough to achieve a good concentration needed for a lesson.

Good luck in your study!

P.S.

I like this site: http://learnrussian.rt.com/

Despite what level you want to achieve in the study of the Russian language. But basically if do you everyday will be given 30 minutes to stady the language it will undoubtedly produce results. Goog luck :)

It took me two weeks to learn all the alphabets, everyday for 15 minutes. I'm very fortunate to have an english-russian partner to skype with almost everyday. Good luck! :)