Hi, hypnosis is considered to be an effective tool by the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association, according to this
Scientific American article. Like anything else of this nature, there is the potential for abuse in terms of questionable marketing. But that doesn't mean the thing itself is a fraud.
On a related note, I'm doing the Photoreading course right now and it seems there's quite a bit of self-hypnosis involved in the system, as well as NLP.