Welcome to my ongoing agony with hairloss
I have been using Rogaine for years now, on and off, lots of trail and error but I eventually figured out the trick to make it work... You MUST use it twice a day every day (like it says on the instructions), if you slack of and keep saying "what difference does once a day or twice make", you wont get the results you want. Really it's that simple, if you're willing to use it religiously, you should get good results. Rogaine doesn't have ANY serious side effects. Propecia (pills) however does have some, but supposedly only for a small percentage of people.
Get Rogaine extra strength (or a generic one, as long as it contains the same active ingredient with the same potency, it will work the same and is cheaper), use it twice a day (shampoo your hair in-between of course), and if you can afford using Propecia with it too, you should get very good results.
Or you can just shave off your head (I did that for a couple of years, then I started
really missing my hair).
The first thing I'll do once I get a job and save some money is doing some of the latest hair implants thingy. Rogaine can only work so much, it doesn't completely solve the problem, but it helps.