Fingerpicking is a technique used by guitarist playing all styles of music, from classical to rock. You will be able to make up great sounding music once you learn the correct finger picking technique, so its definitely worthwhile to spend 5-10 minutes of your practice session on improving your fingerpicking technique. It is very important to develop the right technique right in the beginning, read on to find out the basic method of fingerpicking.
We are going to learn fingerpicking by playing arpeggiated chords, which means that we'll be holding down chords that we are already familiar with, and plucking the chord's individual notes.
Lets get started, place your fretting fingers onto the fretboard and fret an A minor chord.

• Your picking hand should be positioned right between your pickups if you are playing an electric guitar, or on the sound hole if you have an acoustic guitar. Your thumb will be straight, while your other fingers will be curled in a semi knuckle.
• Since we are arpeggiating a chord, you will place the tip of your thumb onto the bass string of the chord (string A, or 5th string), your index finger onto string G (3rd string), middle finger onto string B (2nd string), and your ring finger onto the high E string (1st string).
• Now pluck string A with your thumb, than string G with your index finger, string B with your middle finger, string E with your ring finger, than progress backwards and pluck string B with your middle finger, than string G with your index finger again. 
• Keep in mind that each finger is responsible for only one string while you are fingerpicking, which means that they should not be touching any other string during the exercise. At first your fingers will not be well coordinated, and touch other strings by accident, but don't worry, it gets better with time.
• You need to carry out this finger movement slowly at this first, and repeat it over and over. Try to increase the speed of plucking when your fingers seem coordinated enough, so they are only touching their assigned strings.
• Do this many times over, than change to an E major chord. You will keep your treble string fingers where they are, but move your thumb up onto the low E string (6th string), since this is the bass note of the G major chord. Now repeat the arpeggio here many times over as well.

Keep in mind that the key to learning how to fingerpick is repetition. At first your fingers may go all over the place, hit other strings, etc. But with time and practice, fingerpicking your guitar will become natural and instinctive.

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