When someone gives well reply and gets impressed with their effort but you are out of merits or zero merits in account. What is the better solution in this situation? I've noted few replies from member on my old post that they must deserves to get merited.
It's too early for you to start thinking about merits or gifting same to deserving members who have responded to your post. Take it that you are not yet qualified to give merits yet because you do not have any merits on your own post. If you don't have merits to give, you can just acknowledge their contributions and move on. Any other member of the forum who finds the posts worthy of merits can send merits to those posts. Now you should focus on learning from those deserving posts, that's the privilege you should be enjoying.
You are definitely right,when the Merits are not yet there for you,it should be your motivating factor to make more quality posts so that you can also give merits to those who make quality contributions to your posts, just like the way other person's are giving merits to people who deserve it.
Merits are not yet at your disposal,so just forget about it,and keep on making good posts the way you are doing,with time, Merits will be available for you to give to whom you think deserves it.