The "Find a Teacher" link up the top. There are a whole bunch of them to choose from. Yes, it costs money but anything worthwhile does. More to the point the good ones will be able to help you formulate a plan to learn both inside and outside the class. Trial classes are relatively cheap and will help you find one or more teachers you can really connect with. In my humble opinion language partners are NOT automatically a great way to learn, certainly not from the beginning. Just because someone speaks a language doesn't mean that they can explain it. They're better for practice once you've reached a certain level of proficiency. Community colleges or similar often offer introductory level language courses as well, though the down side of those is that unlike Italki classes you can't schedule them when you want them and you have to commit to certain times each week. Also you're in a class of others which can be good (more practice with people at your own level) or bad ( you don't get one-to-one attention from the teacher). Alternatively there are a number of audio / book courses out there that will at least get you up to a certain basic standard. Oxford University Press' "Take Off In" series (for example) are good primers (if they're still available) though when you start speaking to native speakers you'll get a feel for how little you learn that way. But they can be good for teaching you the all important basics on which you can build. In my opinion Duolingo is woeful for LEARNING a language. The notes are often rudimentary and without context, and the range of words is often too narrow with too many weird sentences that supposedly help you remember but often just leave you wishing for something you could actually use. However it is great for practicing a language and reinforcing (for example) verb forms. Memrise I can't comment on as I haven't (yet) used it.

I agree that getting a teacher who could guide you from the beginning is a good idea. From the very beginning you'd be looking for useful, functional phrases. Look at http://omniglot.com/language/phrases/ for a starter list. You'll also need vocabulary to talk about yourself, and the things around you. Don't be afraid of the slow grinds - they're absolutely necessary if you want the new phrases to become second nature. Basic dialogues also help a lot, and all this gives you a decent base to build on. Again, stick with using teachers and tutors. They'll keep you motivated and will give you the most natural ways of saying things. Typical elementary mistakes come from relying on dictionaries and translators, or trying to guess at how to say something (which means you are relying on your first-language thinking, not your target-language thinking). As Alan K has pointed out, Duolingo doesn't always offer you usable phrases, but it does offer spoken examples which you can imitate, and you can glean grammar rules from even the stranger sentences. Memrise is rather hit-and-miss, and it really depends on the member who created the material. I've used it for learning basic Burmese and revising Slovak, and unfortunately a number of the courses are so poorly put-together that they're unusable. The courses with audio are much more useful, in my opinion.

learning is very personal experience. while through our lives we get used to the idea, that learning is some kind of rigid system (from textbooks to the organization of schools, etc), this is not true. Thus, in learning there are a lot of trials and errors, you have to find what works for you. There are some methods that work for me when I study for exams to get straight As, and I know majority would fail using my system; on the other hand, I know how some other people prefer to learn, and if I were to forced to follow their rules, I would have to drop out of school because I would lose my mind.

thanks for all the good info guys - definitely some stuff to consider. I read some good things about this assimil book - will give it a go i think.

I recomend you the book: ASSIMIL - SPANISH It uses a interesting way to teach a language.