I just felt the pain of having a friend sign up for Torn without using the referral link because they were confused by the process. I know it may seem obvious to most of us but when you initially follow the link (especially from your phone) it doesn't clearly state/display what is going on. True once you hit register (again from your phone it is...frustrating, you can't even see the register button on some devices) Since it was a bit unclear they either think they've done something wrong or google the registration page and proceed from there. A few other issues come up from the latter. Since they have no way of knowing your user and/or id from the link they originally followed initially, they end up not putting in one on sign up. If you haven't felt this pain, bless you, for the rest of us I truly wish us well cause once I found out some of the perks of having someone hit those first 10 levels (and every additional 10..) the gold rule of about multiple accounts really burns right now.
tl;dr please make it abundantly clear what is happening during the process. Maybe add a nice button to register (or start off on the registration page) from the get-go with a bit of text saying "Congratulations! Welcome to TORN. "Username" appreciates your sacrifice..."