Once you've learnt a few basic elements of characters you can start putting them together in different ways to make other characters and combining characters to make words like 人口(population). You'll need to work on learning the
radicals. There is a complete list on
Wikipedia:
Start with the easier ones with fewer strokes and gradually work your way through the list using the learning techniques I've outlined before. The radicals are used in Chinese dictionaries to index the characters in the dictionary. You'll need to learn how to count the number of strokes in a character for that.