Q:

How to avoid asking previously asked questions, yet gain reputation?

I have recently joined Stack Overflow. Mostly, I am searching well on my programming questions here and can find answers on my own, yet this approach does not help with my Stack Overflow reputation, as it seems that almost all the basic/intermediate level questions I can come up with have been previously asked. I also see many questions flagged as previously asked, answered, etc. What would be your advice to build up reputation on Stack Overflow for a newcomer to this site? It seems right now I can only ask questions, not even answer. :-)
Edit: People who flagged my question as duplicate haven't even read it. It is about how to gain reputation while all questions are marked as duplicates. Probably there are bots marking all genuine questions as duplicates. The link provided does not help with my question.
Edit 2: I noticed that the ones who mark my question as duplicate have very high reputation and are ranked top 10% among all contributors on StackOverFlow. Would be nice if they actually took time to answer the question. 

A:

Edit posts. Each accepted edit gives you +2 rep.

Correct grammar.
Fix spelling.
Improve capitalization and punctuation.
Format code.
Remove chatter (e.g. "cheers", "good morning", "thanks in advance", "I'm a newb but...."), etc.

