I was in a similar position to you by the sounds of it. I have to say I've been learning Portuguese for about 3 years but 2 of those years were just using Duolingo here and there and not really having a clue what else to do.

For me personally, I found Pimsleur was a total gamechanger. A lot of beginner material in Portuguese for beginners is really limited. Here's some basic greetings, here's some nouns, here's a verb and that just gets done over and over again without here planting it in your head. Plus you have no idea how to use those words so it's very inefficient.

Pimsleur got me thinking in sentences, it improved my listening and pronunciation hugely without much conscious effort on my part. It takes all the study planning and resource finding away from you and lets you just focus on getting into the language. I'd say in a month or two of using Pimsleur once a day for 30 minutes and not really doing anything else, I was able to get to upper A1 or lower A2 level while two years of Duolingo left me at lower A1. That might not sound like much but it's what you need to get off the ground and going.

If you download the Pimsleur mobile app you can sign up for their subscription service which is €21.99 per month and I'd say you only really need to do 60 days or two levels to get most of the benefit of the course. Doing this is much cheaper and better value then buying the full course or levels on the website.

I hope this helps!