I've had several Boosted stories lately - which is great by the way - and have had a chance to compare them against prior "curated" stories and everyday stories as well. This is what I've seen.

1. Boosted stories for the most part go to readers who are not followers of my other stories. They're new and they're happy to have found me.

2. Recently my everyday stories have gotten less and less distribution even though the Boosted stories have brought in 100s of new followers. There appears to be no "Drafting Effect" with Boosted stories - with all these extra readers finding me you would think they'd get a little interested in other recent ones - but this is not the case. Many new stories (not boosted) have had 0 bump in views. Don't understand this.

3. Everyday stories appear to go to 1/10th of 1% of my followers. I've previously joked that I'd have better results pinning my stories to the telephone poles outside my house. Now I'm convinced of it. What's the point of followers if they're not aware of new stories being posted? Why keep the stat?

4. The Boosted Effect feels like a freeway suddenly going back through the town again and everybody's happy to see the traffic. Then as soon as 500-600 views are ticked off, the freeway goes back to bypassing - in this case me and my stories. I literally go from 500 views a day or more down to 30 and that's for all stories.

5. The Boost program appears to be the sole point of distribution - it drives traffic. I have about 50 readers that find my work - otherwise, every day seems like "off-season" with low views, reads, and $$$. This means to me that the Distribution of stories is Human-activated, which isn't viable as I see it.

For what it's worth this is what I've seen and monitored. I don't know how to organically influence traffic flow or reads. I've focused on quality products, contributing to good Pubs, and do what I can - but Boost is the only thing that changes stats.

I am both happy and disheartened which is rather draining, to be honest.