I've had ads up for a week or so, and although I have VERY limited traffic, I've made about $8 so far. Considering I only have like 50 visitors a day, that's pretty darn good in my opinion.

If I get about 1000 or so visits a day, can I expect Adsense to really start paying off? Or is it a fluke that I even made the $8 so far?

You could get 1,000,000 visitors a day and if no-one clicks on the ads you will earn nothing.

there are so many factors that play into it there really isn't a simple answer. You can have 50k visitors in a day with a high CPM rate and high CTR rate and get $500. Or you can have 200k visitors with low rates and make $75. It varies greatly.

Aim for A LOT OF targeted/organic traffic. This kind of traffic converts well and you can get this from the SERP. Therefore, optimize your site so you can get this organic traffic flowing into your site.

yeah alot of traffic with limited content won't work

How is your CPC like? How many clicks did you get in order to get to 8? It'll also be good to have analytics installed on your site to see where the clicks actually came from. This way, you can see your performing pages and improve in them.

You must choose a good niche and to put a lot of content. If the niche is good, the visitors will come to see what are you posted and the Adsense incoming will increase. You must test with different ads formats and different themes. Some themes works better than other.

You can earn $8 or more with plenty of traffic but it depends from where traffic is coming and content quality as well as information placed on your site. If your sites offer good and informative information then visitors will click on ads you will earn more money through Google.