I see this question quite a lot online as most people (including me!) struggle to get referrals for free programs let alone paid ones!
So ‘Do You Need Referrals To Earn Online’? ……
The answer is….
YES and NO!
IF you can get referrals (and IF they are active in the programs they sign up for!) then you can earn more, BUT they are not necessary as I will show you below.
One of the sites I use daily is CoinPayU, this is my highest earning free site, I have 7 referrals from a couple of years ago but they are not active now

But as you can see I still make regular withdrawals from there

Vie Faucet is another site I use daily and I have no referrals there.

and I still earn daily and withdraw regularly

So it is possible BUT you need to stay consistent and click the ads and / or faucet EVERY day.
Once you have some earnings how do you build your income?
There are several ways to do this and these are a couple of ways that I am using.
You can start with $1 and deposit into Infinity Hash as I showed in this post
If you have $10 you can get passive income from AdPackShareClub
Or if you have $20 (or more) you can start with BitGem Bot
This is a Telegram bot that trades 24/7 with the capital that you deposit. The minimum deposit is only $20 in USDT (BEP-20, TRC-20, ERC-20) or USDC ERC-20.
and this is how you can get started with free PTC / Faucet sites and NO referrals, then use those earnings to start getting passive income from paid sites.
For a full list of free sites that I use click here
For a full list of paid sites that I use click here