I believe 50% users still didn't earned single merits. That means earning merit is very difficult for them.
The percentage is much higher: in the last 3 months,
121,235 users have been active. Many of those accounts are no doubt owned by the same person. In the past 2 years,
32,570 have received at least 1 Merit. It's no surprise that many of those are users can be found in
countless bounty threads.
I think the straggle to get merit is same to all. For newbies it is considered more difficult
To get Merit, you need 2 things:
1. Decent posts
2. Someone with sMerit to give needs to read your posts
You're not a spammer, so I've merited some of your posts.
The art contest was no airdrop. The merits awarded there were for effort, for hours of labour, therefore I really don't understand why it matters if someone earned 300 merits there or 10. They were not airdropped; they were given for real work.
It's not a problem that you earned a lot of Merit from the art contest. The problem will be for you to reproduce this amount and turn it into a consistent flow of Merit earnings.