There are four main ways to get referrals. You can buy them, use a referral exchange, use a down-line builder or you can advertise for them. Lets look at the different ways.
Please note: All figures and amounts given below are for example purposes only, they are not an indication of what values you should use, could see and/or expect.

There are two main ways in which you can do this.
Number one - Paying someone else to join one of your programs.
This is a very risky thing to undertake before you have more experience. I say this because if you paid me $1.00 to sign up to one of your programs, I could join, then as soon as you send me the payment, leave or become inactive. You have then just spent $1.00, and got nothing from it in return. If you do use this particular method you are better breaking the original $1.00 down into stages. You could make an offer something like this;
$0.50 for signing up, $0.25 the first time I cash out at that program and then $0.25 when I cash out for the second time.
Why break it down this way?
It increases the chance that I will work at that site until I reach my first payout, thereby earning you a commission on these earnings and the chance that, I will continue to the second payout, again earning you commission during this period. There is also another two factors to consider with this method. By being a member of a site long enough to reach two separate payouts increases the chances of me staying with that site permanently, thus giving you a permanent stream of referral commission from me, increase drastically. Also, if I were a member of a program long enough to reach payout, the might be a chance I would also be recruiting members to my own down line, thus increasing your commission earnings, if the program concerned offers commission on more than one level of referrals. Of course though, if the program only credits you for one level of referrals, this last point would be irrelevant.
You could also offer me a percentage of what I earn for you. To explain this aspect, assume that a referral in the program you want me to sign up for, earns you 10% commission on my earnings, you could then offer me a percentage of that 10% back. So for every Dollar I earn you would get $0.10 in commission earnings. You could then offer me, (for example) 10% of those commission earnings back, which would be $0.01 per dollar that I earn.

Most people when doing it this way will use a mixture of the techniques mentioned above.

Number two - purchasing referrals by buying them direct from the site.
Again this is a risky thing to undertake as there are issues with this method that you need to be aware of. You need to study the site you are thinking of purchasing them from and you need to consider the following;
Can you trust the owner? - Are they just going to take your payment and not credit your account with any referrals? Does this damage the long term sustainability of the site? Has the site factored in that it will have no or few un-referred members?
This means that the profit margin of some ads purchased will shrink, and sometimes considerably, with sites that sell referrals and here's why;
A site sells a $0.01 advert for $0.03. That means the advertiser purchases an ad for $0.03, the site pays a member $0.01 for reading that ad, then the sites profit on this transaction is the remaining $0.02.
This is not all profit though, because they have running costs that they need to meet/cover. These running costs are hosting, domain names, a wage for the site owner etc. The site owner (if responsible, and operating the site in a sustainable fashion) would know that, and of that 2cent profit, ($0.02, this can also be written as 2c) 50% needs to go back into the site to cover running costs, that's 1c (one cent), leaving the other 1c to be taken as a "wage", meaning that becomes part of the owners salary, or income, for running their business. They would have also needed to factor in the referral value that every ad purchased must also account for. Now a responsible site owner would have worked this value into the original ad price and would be covered by the 1c that was taken to be used for the sites running cost.
But, in any program, there are always un-referred members and these members are of a higher financial value to the owner. Why? because when they click that ad and earn their 1c, that's it, that's all the owner has to pay for, for that member clicking that ad. There is no up-line, therefore no referral commission to credit, because that member wasn't referred to that site by anybody. So the owner has more than the original 1c allocated for running costs, from the clicks that these type of members make. So, these type of un-referred members will be earning a higher amount for the site, than a referred member would. This surplus gets absorbed into the "sustainability cushion". This basically means the owner will have more funds available when unforeseen circumstances and problems arise. (this could be an unexpected increase in hosting costs for example) Because they have a large enough "sustainability cushion" they can carry this deficit until they can adjust there pricing structure accordingly.

Even so there is no guarantee that the referrals you purchase will be active, or that they will not leave the site after a week or so. Some sites do replace inactive referrals, but they are very rare.
Now what if another owner has not taken, or realised, the value of an un-referred member into account. They simply see these un-referred members as another very lucrative asset(s) that they could sell. So the site sells all these un-referred members. They now have all this lovely profit don't they? Well yes they do, but, they now have no, or very few, un-referred members, they now have nothing going into that "sustainability cushion". A less experienced owner could see this as profit made, and, either add the amount to their personal wage, or spent it on expanding the site etc. So what happens when the next unforeseen problem occurs? They no longer have the funds available. That means new advertising purchases will be paying the members for earlier advertising clicks, instead of the money for this sale going into the site funds, and being there to pay the member that are going to click that ad, when they reach payout. So now all of a sudden the site is running behind. Future sales are being used to pay members for clicking on advertising that has already been paid for previously. What normally happens to a site in this position is that, payout thresholds will rise, payout requests will start to take longer and longer to be met. And all this because they saw a means of a quick and substantial profit earlier, without taking into account the ramifications of such an act. Unfortunately most of the sites that fall into this pitfall, will fold and members will lose their accounts. Very few of them will manage to correct the slide and turn the situation around. That's bad right? Well if you have just purchased a referral package then it gets worse, not only have you lost your account and earnings, you have also lost the money you have just spent on buying those referrals.
I am not saying that either of the above methods are destined to failure. They are used to some degree of success by quite a few people/members. What I am saying is, please be aware of the pitfalls and only consider using either or both of these methods, once you have gained a bit of experience and knowledge about what exactly is involved, what factors you need to consider, and you are able calculate the risks involved accurately.

Referral exchange sites are where members join and then will join each others program on a one for one basis (normally). To explain:
If you and I were members of the same exchange site, you could approach me and say "I'll join under you at one of your sites if you join under me at one of mine".
When using this particular type of site you need to be aware that in order for it to work as intended, you (as you are making the approach to me in this example) need to have the necessary time available for the extra work load that you would gain by joining an additional site. You need to be able to trust me so that I wont just join, to get you in one of my programs, and then become inactive or leave after a short amount of time.
I also have to take the same conditions into account regarding you. Have I got the time available for an additional program? How long are you going to stay active in my program? etc etc. So, as you can see this type of site doesn't automatically guarantee success. Again you need to consider the variables and check each member that approaches you, or you approach, that they have a reasonable record for keeping their end of the deal. Why only a reasonable record and not a 100% record for keeping their end of the agreement?
Well, and this is another thing that you need to take into account, what if some of the members lie about the positive aspects of joining any particular program. Would you want to stay at a site that you were promised the ability to earn $1.00 a day, but once you joined, you find that you were only earning $0.25 a day for twice as much work as some of the sites you're already a member of? I know I wouldn't.
Again, using this type of method needs careful consideration and research, to make sure that its going to work for you. Different members have had varying degree's of success with different exchange sites. They can work, and do work for some, but it is not the method you want to use until you have the experience needed that will increase your chances of success.

This can be a good way of gaining some referrals and its an easy method to use as well. You will see a topic or thread in a forum or site, that will have a description of the program concerned, and then a link to join through. The members of that site will join in turn, each one joining through the link of the person who joined immediately before them. It will look something like this;


You would join under the last link posted, then leave your referral link in your post, so the next person will join under you and so on. These are even more valuable if you are joining a program that has, for example, 5 levels of referral commission. This means the next five people to join after you will be in your down-line. The next one in your level one down-line, the next after that in your level two down-line etc etc. Even if the program has only one level of referral commission, you will at least get one ref. There can be drawbacks though, and that could be that the next one(s) to join under you, and therefore into your down-line, could, sign up and then for whatever reason become inactive or leave (they do not like the site, they don't have the time, they forget they joined - yes that really does happen! etc, etc). When this happens just say to yourself "Tough luck, I hope I do better next time" as there is nothing you can do. This is because most sites and forums will not "edit" the down-line, to remove inactive members due to the time and work involved doing so. It will happen to you, it will be frustrating, but its happened to all of us at least ( and I do mean at least!) one time or another. It is important to remember that you must still research the site in full, before joining. Never take anybodies word when they say "Great site - earn loads" or "Great owner, honest and trust worthy". You will eventually learn who you can trust and who you can't, but always make sure you follow your own opinions on/about the site, never anybody else's - even me, until you are sure that you can trust me.

This is the best method to start with and I will be helping you to set this up shortly. It is hard work at times, but once you have learned how to do it, and be successful at it, there is no limits to how many members you will be able to gain in your down-line. The more successful you are, the bigger your down-line will be. Although GPT work is not going to provide you with a large monthly pay check at first, successful advertising is the difference between how much, or how little you will/can earn. A few people can make it all the way to earning a full time income by doing GPT work, but they include within that, other methods of earning. I will not drown you in information now, but this is one of the major factors that will determine how successful you are at working on-line. We will cover additional methods of earning at a later date because most of the methods and techniques you are about to learn, will be the foundations you will need, as you start to build your Internet-Earning career.
There are two methods of advertising, one is purchased advertising and one is free advertising. You are going to use a combination of both. But as you are only just starting out we will cover free advertising first. You are about to use two methods of gaining referrals, one will be site by site, and the other will be getting them (hopefully) to join three or four sites at a time. Some people prefer to recruit using just one of the methods, some preferring to recruit site by site, whilst others prefer to recruit them by getting them to join a few sites in one go. I, personally use a mixture of both (as many others do) and have found that way to be the most successful method for me. We do not know which method will work best for you, and if you were to learn how to do both at the same time you would be swamped with information. So firstly we are going to cover the "getting them to join multiple programs" method as this is the easiest to learn and some of the methods used will also be used (amongst others) in the other method.
You now have an outline of some of the different methods of gaining referrals and building your down-lines. It will not be easy at first, but it will be very rewarding once you start to see all your hard work paying off. The next stage will cover building your down line in one site at a time.