What's the best way to get more points?

Question

I feel like I'm stuck below 1000 and can't seem to break the glass ceiling!
Voting, Answering, Asking? What's the best bet for slowly but surely raising my points?

Answer 1

In order of decreasing rep benefit:

• Answer questions with bounties -- the minimum bounty is 50 rep, and they don't count towards the rep cap
• Post awesome answers that get accepted -- you get 15 rep for an accept, and it doesn't count towards the rep cap
• Post awesome answers that get oodles of upvotes -- you get 10 rep per upvote, but your total rep gain is capped at 200 per day
• Post awesome questions that also get upvotes -- 5 rep per upvote
• Accept answers on your questions -- 2 rep per accept
• Suggest edits to posts and tag wikis -- 2 rep per accepted suggestion

Voting doesn't get you rep (in fact, downvotes cost you 1 rep each on answers only), but it does give other people rep, encouraging them to contribute, as well as sorting posts by quality -- yay voting

Answer 2

The best way is to contribute good answers. Good questions will grant you points too. Quantity is paramount, but there's a minimum quality requirement. It is more efficient, but less neighborly, to contribute popular content than interesting content. In addition to the new questions that come in, try to answer “unanswered” questions, especially unanswered questions.

The topic has been discussed to death on the main Meta. For example, there are pretty good tips to gain reputation fast on Stack Overflow, though these tips mostly apply to the high-activity tags on Stack Overflow. Here, being antisocial won't help you get more points.

As you've just discovered, edits get you a few points too, if you don't have many yet. We still have many tag wikis that need writing.

Answer 3

Find old questions without good answers. Decide if the question is a good question (or could be, with edit); provide a well constructed awesome answer with plenty of links and great information. Then offer a bounty.

The bounty gets people's attention. That draws some more upvotes. Hopefully a great answer provides more rep than the cost of the bounty. It also provides more answers if you missed some information, which is good.

And if OP is around and accepts that's more rep.

I forget where I read this; or who wrote it. It's not my idea.

EDIT: Here's the link Clever bounty reputation hack

Answer 4

One way is to keep the chat tab open. It's subscribed to all new questions on the site. There'll be a whole bunch of easy (for you) ones that you can quickly climb on.

Answer 5

If you are like me (i.e. not an expert in anything), ask lots of questions, even if it's just for the sake of curiosity.