The secret about growing on on the forum, boils down to your determination to succeed and willingness to adhere to the rules of the forum. Your focus should be on how you can learn or impact the forum with the little knowledge you have and this can be down through thread creation or post reply and not how fast you can grow. If you put attentions on getting merits, you'll just end up frustrated as you won't get that which you seek but when you shift the attention to learning and upgrading your knowledge about Bitcoin and cryptocurency in general then it'll directly affect how you engage on the forum and create more awareness to your posts.

It doesn't matter if you have started poorly as I see from others comments concerning you but if you truely want to get the best from the forum, don't give up. Many of us you see today didn't start that well either. We made our own mistakes but what's different is that we wanted what's best for ourselves and the forum so we adjusted to what best suits all parties and today we're doing quite well for ourselves. You can still change, just equip yourself with the right mindset and know the do's and don't of the forum then you're good to go.