Mate, it depand upon your writing skills and your valuable post, reply and thoughts if you did it you will get it.
There are many ways of getting merit and Yes that's right and that is one of the requirements to earn merit but not just that because the main thing to earn merits is the word (CONTRIBUTION) if we have a good contribution for this forum by posting a good reply then achievement will be follow. Also there are many users here in forum who gave their merits by a task or let say that free merits to those users who complete the task by the OP.