re: Anyone ever paid to "boost" a post on FB?

No, it is not just people in your area. It also targets people who "like" things in your area.

For example, some people like "City of Baton Rouge" and "City of New Orleans", so when you target Louisiana they will fall in that category. Same with the click farms. Even if you target something similar people like, you will get a bunch of fake profiles of people that "like" stuff in your area that is similar that are fake, thus diluting your actual "base" of fans.

Boosting is great, just boost only to your fans who are grown organically. You can grow your "likes" on your page, by encouraging your current fans to share your page with others. You get your current fans to do that by boosting the posts you ask them to share so that they actually see it.