Another good idea is to have your family and relatives send you pictures and documents from thier lives. You can talk to your parents to get your birth certificate, or those of your siblings. You could ask to get your parents birth certificates or marrige/divorce. Grand parents might have WWII draft records, birth certificates, naturalization, immigration, marriage/divorce, social security application. What you can gather now from your family will help immensely in the initial plotting of your family tree. Documents help provide concrete proof of lineage, instead of relying on the family stories passed generation to generation that you are a descendant of some great person. This way you can actually prove that you are related to that person, or maybe someone else.