I have been into the system for some months now and I have made over twenty posts but no simply merit has been given to me or earn by me and this make me to be surprise on how these merit are generated, given or earned. However, looking at it in another perspective, I don't know if it is because I did not meet the number of my post require to earn a merit or because of the low quality of my post that is the reason why I had not been able to earn a single merit. So please I will like to get more clarifications on the possible requirement for earning merit.
Firstly I can see you are new to the system and am saying welcome to Bitcointalk forum, earning merits doesn't necessarily required post count or your quantity of posts but rather a single post can have multiples of merits. However, the logic is that any post can only get merit or merits from another user that have an sMerit after which he or she decided to merit your post based on how much informative, educative, or contribution your post mean to him or her, I will advise that you should be observant enough to do what those that seems to be earning merits are doing by doing it rightly, surprisingly merits will keep coming, the truth is that everyone you see with tons of merits started one day just like you, so don't be discouraged keep pushing hard and growing a thicker skin as you navigates the forum.