I think it definitely helps having a set topic for each week.

Indeed! Some of the vocab videos on Youtube, while useful in other ways, can be frustratingly random. A sentence like "I bought a new purse" will be followed up by "Did you remember to brush your teeth?" On the one hand it's great because I'm getting a lot of nouns and verbs splashed in front of me. On the other hand though, it's annoying because the sentences aren't really related to each other. That said, Dala let's me play around with her DuoLingo app from time to time and it seems to have a problem in the other direction, where a ten question exercise might ask me about "pantalones" in three or four out of the ten questions.

I'm really enjoying reading Voice of America and DW in Spanish. Some articles I can get through relatively well on my own where other ones will have me busting out the dictionary for every other word. Either way, it's great immersion wise.

Random aside, do you have Rosetta Stone where you live? I remember ten years ago, that software was expensive as heck, like $2-300 a level, and some languages went up to five or six levels. It seems like all the new resources out there have really put pressure on them to offer better deals, because I recently saw a lifetime account for Spanish for only $200.