Ok, this is a small idea I would greatly appreciate any kinds of comments on this topic. Basically my suggestion is a simple idea but I am unsure of amount of the coding required.

The suggestion is in terms of the associate program and being rewarded for inviting new players, It will be available for those ranked Capo or Boss up. Reflective of the rank you could be a captain commanding a crew of up to five people. Now new players who find the game and join should have access to this feature, by becoming a member of the crew. But to create an incentive for people to actually pursue their friends to join the game, they would have to be rewarded with say 2.5mill for every 5 people that you recruit into your crew. But to prevent it from being abused the stipulation for players to get the 2.5mill is by the members ranking up to Made Man, which is a min time of 11 days activity, this would hopefully be ample time for a new member to start the game, to understand the game and start to enjoy playing the game. 

An example of this would be Deimne's family where he has about 23 members at Capo or above. If they each invite 5 new members, the user base will expand by 115 members in one family alone. There is about another 20 members Capo and above in NY and if they invited 5 members each will increase by 100. Totally 215 for just NY alone.

This will also bring another slight benefit of larger HQs to be able to house the extra members, allowing for extra revenue to be brought in. This will also be of benefit to the admins, increasing user base size and number of players active. Also by the purchasing of larger HQs it can take some money out of the game. It will also have personal benefits to individual players by them welcoming new members and encouraging them to stay they would be getting 2.5mill reward plus all 5 of the associates taxes up until the point of Made Man.

Now to prevent people from sending out a ton of invites at once just to get the money. There would be a limit of the number of invites you can send out a day. As I reckon the crew size will be just 5, you should only be able to send out 2 invites a day and a max of 6 over the week, this will preventing people from sending 14 invites and just hoping people reply back to it. You could use it by sending 2 on Monday, 1 on Tuesday, 2 on Thursday and 1 on the Friday providing your crew isn't full but that would be all you can send.

Uhhm, I got a idea that might allow the friends to come, on a small scale.

If you send an 'invite' letter to a friends e-mail, through a MR... option... You will earn... Lets say, a BG if that person gets to Wise Guy on any character on his account.

Sounds fun?

That idea you just mentioned is the exact same basis of my suggestion.

I like the sound of this, plus it can be used for more realisim in the game.

You could have your family structure so that only a made man with atlest 1 associate will be ranked to capo & if they want to get boss they would need 4 associates the only problem is you lose the associate when they reach made but that can be over looked from an RP point of view.

There is already an idea being worked on by us coders for a referal system. I won't go into detail about it currently, but we have decided that giving a static incentive is the wrong way to go.