1. Nail down your workflow: Make sure you get a proper kit - spare batteries & memory cards, a reasonably-sized hard drive & backup system, a way to organize & edit photos, even if it's only Picasa for free. The two biggest things I see are people either not getting their camera setup properly (one battery that runs out of juice, one memory card that runs out of room, no bag to carry all the gear around in, etc.) and people not getting their post-production workflow in order (how do you import your photos? where do they go? what do you organize them in? how do you edit them? what's your backup plan?). I know a fair number of very talented amateur photographers who operate like idiots because they don't keep proper backups, refuse to learn anything about how their computer works as far as where the photos are stored, if they have enough room, etc. I've had to help them not only recovery photos on failed drives, but also upgrade their drives because they'll literally max out a hard drive for space. So nail your workflow down so you know the A-Z production line of taking a photo, storing/editing/backing up photos, sharing them online & printing them, etc.
2. Get educated: Read stuff like Understanding Exposure, Strobist, etc. The more you know, the more control you have, which means the more ability you will have to make the photo come out how you want it, and the more options you will have for doing different creative looks. Learn Photoshop & color grading. Read your camera's manual. Spend time reading in forums, asking & answering questions, browsing Flickr, The Big Picture, National Geographic, etc. Basically just immerse yourself & LEARN. You don't necessarily need a huge amount of knowledge to take great photos, but if you know how to use a pair of linked flashes together and do some editing in Lightroom with VSCO presets, for example, you can get a vastly different, more professional quality of photos with basically no extra effort in-person. Just takes a little bit of know-how. And nearly everything is available to learn online for free if you're willing to look through blogs, Youtube videos, etc.
3. Buy equipment that motivates you & shoot daily: Honestly, my iPhone 4S has been one of my favorite cameras ever. At the peak of my shooting, I was taking approximately 500-600 photos per week with it. Since it was always in my pocket, I was
always taking photos - out the car window, while waiting in line somewhere, just to kill time, etc., especially since I could edit & upload photos right from my phone with Camera+, Afterfocus, etc. I have a whole camera rig setup with iPhone adapters for my steadicam, slider, etc. for doing filming as well. If a $5,000 camera motivates you, then save up & buy it and get out there and shoot. The caveat, of course, being that having an expensive camera will
not magically make you a great shooter and will
not inherently motivate you if you don't really want to get out there & shoot. Think of it like buying an exercise machine...the majority of them end up as clothing racks because people think they'll be motivated once they buy them, but that's not how it works.
I dunno, I'm sure I could think of a million tips, but that's pretty much what it boils down to: pick up the gear you like & go use it all the time, learn everything you can, and nail down your workflow. The less barriers you have (i.e. a camera you don't like, lack of knowledge, no procedure for shooting/storing/editing photos), the more likely you are to use your equipment. I mean, how many people do you know who have video camcorders & shoot with them all the time, and yet you never see finished videos? That's because it's fun to shoot, but it's not so fun to figure out how to get that footage into a computer, edit it, export it to Youtube or a DVD, etc. Makes me wonder how many millions of years of footage of kid's soccer games are sitting around unedited on tapes & memory cards out there
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