That is common because when people are new to bitcoins then only for some time they will try these faucet sites and once they come to know either these faucets are waste of time or they got better ways to earn bitcoins then they will be inactive on these faucet sites. I too got around 20+ referrals but nowadays one couple of guys are active and I use those coins to buy lottery tickets every week.
It is not too hard to get referrals for faucets these days,many new users are attracted to crypto world because of high BTC price.But like you say problem is that most of that refs will become inactive after some time,some lose interest-others forget their logging details.
I have nice number of refs on freebitco but most of them are not active as I can see,but there is a few hundreds free tickets for me every week and hope to one can be lucky to win something on lottery.I use this faucet just few times per week,remember times I use it at least 10-15 times every day