Of course learning is the most important thing to focus on as a newbie, whereby the quality of your post will surely determine on how you will earn merit, the prominent members do check and view posts and if you are lucky enough they found something new and clear that is an achievement to the platform you will earn merit from them so let just keep the good work ongoing.
Ranking up is quite good which merit is one of the criteria but learning and acquiring knowledge would have been much better for a newbie because the more you read threads and learn how to make a quality and reasonable contributions merits will surely come .
I know that every newbies wants to earn merits , yes it’s quite understandable that most individual wants to grow at all Cost not minding the genuine processes that might take time but will yield effective profits .
Hence, I will advice newbies to focus more on the learning aspects than the merits aspects because when you are knowledgeable enough to make a quality post merits will surely come thanks .