I am a native english speaker and have tried to learn spanish in the past for school but just couldn't get interested at all. Now I've been trying to teach myself Russian (because why not try one of the more difficult languages for english speakers after failing with one of the easier ones...) and have found apps and books that help in the extreme beginning but have struggled to find anything to help me get out of A1 level.

It doesn't help that I'm cheap and refuse to pay for lessons in something that's not a necessity. So I've been finding Russian articles or songs online, printing them off, writing them down in my own Russian handwriting. Then I read it trying to understand it, then I translate it and write the translation next to it. I'll come back to it in a day or two and re-read the original text to see how well I remember the translation as I read. I have no idea if this is the best way, but so far I've definitely started picking up more vocabulary at least.

I got the idea from Luca Lampariello, it's probably a complete bastardization of his "bi-directional translation" method but so far I think it's actually helping.