To cut this story short, if you really want to rank up and have a good reputation just do the opposite, stay active, learn more and expect nothing.
These are my mistakes, and I hope you won't do the same so you can be more successful here. Right now, I'm only learning with my experience and hopefully I can give something more helpful in the future.
Being active is one of the most important aspects of growing or ranking up in this wonderful forum; you can't expect someone who has no experience with the forum to get merits; you must be very active, make your own personal contributions to the forum, and help others, and you will see your rank rise.
Some of us approach the forum with different perspectives, which is why, once you start with bounty, it always appears very difficult to rank up because your threads are full of bounties; the best thing to do is to be very active and contribute to the forum.