Read Dan Heisman's Novice Nook column on Chess Cafe
http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm#Novice Nook
Get a book on basic tactics (like Winning Chess Tactics) and use the tactics trainner here on Chess.com. Find a book with a few hundred basic tactical puzzles and do them repeatedly until you have them memorized.
Make sure you really pay attention to Dan Heisman's articles about "Real Chess". You may also want to get his book the Improving Chess Thinker and also Per Ostman's book Your Best Move.
Check your local public library and send me an email. I have somethings I can send you to help you. My email is my chess.com user name @gmail.com.
tl;dr how do I get better?
So, I'm not new to chess, But i'm not great at it. But recently i've been playing alot of chess recently. I play plenty of games and i'm got some software on my computer (deep fritz and arena) but I don't see myself improving. I also do those puzzles (and fail horribly) so what should I do to get better? maybe some form of excercise. some light reading of tips? maybe a mentor (don't have any money).
I'm very interested in chess, and i've got time, but I don't have any money. I feel that chess is something I really wanna get good at. Any help would be very appreciated.