Hey there,
let's say you make a premium membership profile type which can be paid or even achieved by earning a predefined amount of points. I.e. if a user collects 1.000 points, he will automatically have his profile type changed. Though it would not work for recurring subscribers but for one-time payment memberships. There would not be the need for making it backwards.
Not sure how difficult it might be to implement this but I think this would result in a lot of possibilities. You could have trusted members on this way. This would make active users feel special and motivate new users to be active as well to achieve this state of being a special member.