1) You can earn Merit by helping other members, contributing quality posts or giving useful opinions.
Merit will be given by other members. Therefore, they have to review your posts before deciding to give them.
With each 2 merits that other members give you, you I'll earn 1 smerit, ít is useless for you, the only thing you can do with smerits is give it to others who you feel that their posts are high quality.

2)Begging, exchanging or buying/selling merit are violated the forum rules.
If detected, you will receive red trust. As you know losing prestige is very easy, but regaining ít is much harder. In addition, most signature bounties refuse red trust members.