Well , merits comes from members here it means your posts and topic should Determine if you will get merits or not and how much you will get merits depend on your post quality and also on the members and his generous ..

for the moment lot of newbie member have difficulty to get merits because old members here got a bad picture about them , they think every new member is a scammer and thats why its hard to a newbie or jr member to rank up and i had the same problem tho .

so the only way is to keep working on your post quality and make sure they are good and clear enough , help people around the forum with their problems , find solutions and share it on the forum and by this way only you will get merits and credibility for yourself ..