Real quick, you may want to remove the call to action in your first post (asking people to join / post) so your post doesn't come off as an advertisement.
First of all, I have to point out that when searching for
pokemon dawn fan forum you're
#8 on the first page of google results. This tells me that your content is hitting at least some right keywords, and your SEO is only going to improve with time -- especially since you made this forum literally 15 days ago as of this post!
Your membership isn't even that bad either. You've been open 15 days and have a total of 12 members, 11 if we exclude the forum creator. That's very nearly a new member per day -- no, it's not droves of people, but quite frankly that is a pretty good statistic for a forum that has been open for hardly more than two weeks,
especially considering that your advertisement efforts have been, by all appearances, minimal*
* This statement is based on your PB Support post history and the fact that you have an advertisement thread created at the beginning of the month with 0 bumps, a handful of support posts only, only one post in your advertisement board on your forum, and no affiliates.I genuinely question why you think your forum is 'dying' when you have 376 posts on your forum over the last 15 days, which averages to roughly 25 posts per day. So many forums would give their left arm for that kind of activity statistic!
You're also not accounting for the time of year -- your target demographic (13+ kids [due to PB ToS] and young adults) are probably wrapping up end-of-term classes, finals, etc, and getting ready to go on vacation with their families. Your older fringe demographic (ie us old farts who are older than pokemon's 20 years) is busy with the holiday season at work -- retail jobs have gone into overdrive, and even corporate jobs are trying to finish things up before the end of the calendar year so they can go on vacation. A lot of people think that end-of-year holidays will drive up forum participation and traffic when the opposite is true (the real boost is at the end of the school year / during May - August).
Personally I don't think you should be concerned about your forum dying QUITE yet. You've been more fortunate than most forums in seeing a pretty early membership boom during your first month of existence, but in an older, more established fandom like pokemon (where there are a tonne of competing sites/ideas) that's not really very common. You will likely see a lot more low points before things pick up.
If you want to preempt this, you need to concentrate on a few key things:
1. Brand recognition: Not the pokemon brand, no, but your forum brand. "The Dawn Fanclub" is direct and to the point, but
generic. If you search for your forum
name on Google, you drop to page 2, entry #5. Not terrible, but not great. It's preceded by older groups with the exact same name, whose age has allowed and will continue to allow them to outstrip you in membership right now because they have years of content to fall back on.
Suggestion: Use "The Dawn Fanclub" or a variation of as a TAGLINE instead of your forum name. It will still allow you to come up in the appropriate google searches (especially since your forum content will also match), while creating a more unique way for your visitors to remember you. Something like... "The Day's First Light: A Dawn / Hikari Fanclub" (a punny title is always a good way to go [Hikari means light, Dawn is the first light of day]). Obviously you don't have to actually use this, but just a little idea to get the ball rolling.
2. Better content: I think you've got a pretty good setup organisation wise, but it could be better. If your focus is to be a Dawn fanclub, then that needs to be where a bulk of your content goes. You also have the most number of total threads in your "forum games" board, when that honour should go in your "Dawn" related boards/category.
Suggestions: The biggest one is to put a bigger emphasis on Dawn-related content. You have a Dawn category with one board for threads about Dawn. You have a separate board for Pearlshipping. Why? Surely Pearlshipping (for those not in the know: the fandom name for being a fan of a relationship between Ash and Dawn) would fall under the "Dawn" category? Then you have general pokemon fan art / fics / videos in a separate category. That's great, but why not make Dawn-specific fan art / fic / video boards in the Dawn category? Remember: your goal is to be a hub for Dawn-related content, so all Dawn-related content should be easily accessible and not buried with unrelated content. Doing this will also ensure that your Dawn content outnumbers the total content of other boards, showing that your forum is, in fact, focused on Dawn.
I also recommend posting in Get Opinions About Your Forum (link below) for a more detailed review on your content / organisation.
3. Better theme: A nice theme isn't always that important, but in the demographic of pokemon fans, it is. The pokemon fandom is filled with beautiful screencap and manga edits, gifs, fan resources, fan art ... as a whole this fandom is very visually-oriented, and having an aesthetically pleasing theme would go a LONG way in this fandom. This isn't
Get Opinions About Your Forum so I won't give a detailed theme review here especially since I already gave a pretty lengthy organisational review, but I recommend posting there to see the pros and cons of your current theme so you can see where it can be improved.
ULTIMATELY I don't really think your forum is "dying". There's a slight lull in content and registration at the moment, which could be explained by the holiday season and the lack of solid advertising / affiliation. You've got great SEO for your keywords, especially considering you've only been around for 15 days, so you've got a head start on most other forums. You're still early enough in your forum's life that you haven't developed any reputation (good OR bad) so you can preempt any forum "death" with a solid marketing approach (more topic-specific content, advertising, visual improvements), which would also increase your SEO ranking & traffic, and thus create a larger pool of visitors to convert into members.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
