Actually, the question is in the subject. Would be interesting to know pros and cons (meanwhile trying all kinds of options as well).

When I first started I added only characters, but now I add words and have it set to automatically add the individual characters that comprise them. You can tweak that setting on this page:

http://www.skritter.cn/account/settings-language

Getting familiar with a base of 400 characters was very helpful and if I started again I'd do the same thing.

I'd say it depends somewhat on the rest of you Chinese study. If you're studying spoken Chinese as well as writing right now, you might find it useful to parallel your studies, so that you're reinforcing the one with the other. However, I'd say that, if you're just studying writing, starting off with a bunch of characters can be a big help.

I started studying 汉字 after a year in China, but I learned very limited Chinese in that year, and I was back in the States when I started 汉字, and I wasn't studying spoken Chinese at the time. In my case, I learned about 400-450 individual characters (much like mcfarljw), and then started learning more words when I came back to China. I imagine what I did would be better for vocabulary expansion, but learning words rather than individual characters would be better for language acquisition.

My problem with character study is that many characters aren't really used that much by themselves - they're used as parts of words. Another problem is that you get characters like 经 that supposedly mean something by themselves ("warp, channels, longitude, scripture, run, endure, or regular" according to nciku), but the words they're in don't seem to have much to do with the root meaning of 经, like 经济 (economic/economy). Add to that the fact that the pronunciation of the characters changes based on which word it's used in and I feel like isolated character study (i.e. without studying lots of words) is just too much work for too little payoff.

When I started on skritter, I used the New Practical Chinese reader list which is comprised of mostly words and the HSK 1. In the language settings, I set to add individual characters when adding words.

Hence, I study words but their individual characters in same time, as mentioned above: one reinforces the other.

Well, thanks for the comments. I'd like to develop basic communication and writing skills (and beyond), but in parallel. So I guess that adding words would serve better for me. I listen to Pimsleur and will switch to ChinesePod probably when I'll complete all those three levels (currently on the second level).

I started using Skritter early this year, when I was already on an intermediate level, but I never had any formal class; I've done a lot of learning myself. The first thing, which I did on Skritter, was learning all 260 Radicals from the list in Skritter. I learned mainly writing the radical and remembering the meaning, paid less attention to pinyin and tones. This helped me a lot in learning and remembering characters afterwards, although it was a kind of "hardship-learning", but it paid off. After this, I was only learning characters from words, so in context. Now I am above 2000 characters and more than 4000 words, so now I am adding also single characters, mainly those, which are often used in names and less in meaningful words.
Chinesepod will give you a lot of useful everyday words and expressions, however, sometimes the characters used e.g. in Elementary may not be in the list of HSK 1 - 6 or within the most used 3000 characters. However, I find it quite good and helpfull, especially, as I am living in China. This is my experience, don't know, whether it will help you.

Sharing practice certainly helps, peng yo :) Actually, never thought about learning radicals first - just jumped into it. I think I'll switch to your "golden tip" to try it. Excellent advice that should persist in Skritter FAQ.

@Roland: was it this list (of radicals)? http://www.skritter.com/vocab/listsect?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxj_gOgFDA&sect=0

or maybe some other?

@breakphreak This is the "Radicals" list they put on the Textbooks page. I'm not sure what the difference is between this list and the one you linked to.

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIYCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbyIFbGlzdDcM

James

@jww1066: thanks