Writing terms and conditions from a blank page is hard to start and writing them from a template produces a document about somebody else. The method that works starts from neither: it starts from the handful of things that actually go wrong in your business, because every clause worth having is an answer to one of them.
Start with your own failure cases
List the six arguments you have had or expect: a customer who wants a refund outside the window, an order you priced wrong, somebody abusing a free plan, a chargeback, a user uploading something you have to take down, a customer who says they never agreed. Each one names a clause. The refund window, the order acceptance point, acceptable use and suspension, the payment terms, the content license and takedown route, and the acceptance step. That is most of a document and every line of it is load-bearing.
Then fill the standard frame
Around those, the usual frame: the legal entity, what the service is and what you do not promise, intellectual property, a proportionate liability cap, termination, governing law and venue, how the terms change, and a version with an effective date. Write it in the second person and in short sentences. Legalese does not make a term more enforceable, and a document a user can follow is easier to defend as fairly presented.
Test it against the flow
Read the finished document beside your actual checkout or sign-up. Does the dispatch window match what the product page says. Does the cancellation clause describe the route the account page really offers. Does the renewal wording match the email the billing system sends. Most defects in small business terms are not legal errors, they are the document describing a slightly different product to the one that ships, and that mismatch is what a customer quotes back at you.
Version it, then leave it alone
Put a version and an effective date at the top, keep the superseded copies, and record which version each customer accepted. Then change it only when the entity, the service or the money changes, and give the notice your own change clause promises. Terms that are edited casually are terms nobody can say the state of on any given day, which quietly undoes the work of writing them carefully in the first place.
Questions people ask about writing terms and conditions
How long should this take?
For a straightforward online business, an afternoon for the draft and a second sitting to reconcile it with the checkout. Longer if money, regulated services or real liability are involved, and then it is worth a lawyer.
Should I write them before launch?
Write the acceptance step before launch, because retrofitting agreement to existing users is the hard part. The clauses can be improved afterwards; the record cannot be created retrospectively.
Plain English or legal language?
Plain English. Clarity helps enforceability rather than hurting it, and the clauses that get read down are usually the overreaching ones rather than the readable ones.